


Drive

by sigo



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: 1980s, Alternate Universe - 1980s, Alternate Universe - Historical, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Bisexual Armitage Hux, Bottom Armitage Hux, Eventual Happy Ending, Everyone Is Gay, F/M, He gets even dont worry, Inspired by Stephen King, Kylo Ren Has Issues, M/M, Mechanic Kylo Ren, Rape/Non-con Elements, Revenge, Rimming, Serial Killers, Top Kylo Ren, author hux
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:08:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 8
Words: 26,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26186929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sigo/pseuds/sigo
Summary: “I know this is short notice,” said Ren, “but I remembered the paper did a profile on you because you live just southeast of us, and I’m in a pinch. You’d have my undying gratitude if you came.”Hux doubted that said gratitude would last even the length of the event, but Bangor was close. A straight shot up the interstate, and Millicent would hardly know he was gone. It crossed Hux’s mind to say that perhaps two thousand dollars would be more appropriate, given that he was being called in for triage (and also, if he admitted it to himself, because he had been the second choice and it upset him), but he refrained from it. It was perhaps too cold-hearted even for him to take advantage of a public library. He accepted the date and the fifteen hundred dollar offer. It seemed fair.Of course, when he was lying in a culvert in the middle of the cold October night naked from the waist down and bleeding from his broken nose, it didn’t seem fair at all. But would two thousand have? Or two billion? Whether you could put a price tag on pain and terror was not something that Hux had ever considered before, and once he had, he thought not.
Relationships: Armitage Hux & Kylo Ren, Armitage Hux & Rose Tico, Armitage Hux/Kylo Ren, Armitage Hux/Rose Tico
Comments: 100
Kudos: 178





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> TW -- here there be serial killers, rapists, time period relevant homophobia, and bad decisions.

Armitage Hux scheduled one speaking engagement per month, when he could, and never for less than twelve hundred dollars each. It supplemented his retirement fund. He wasn’t going to go on writing forever, after all. At least not as a means of supporting himself. If he was required to pen a novel for food in his seventies what sort of work would he put out? No, it was out of the question. His body of work would end when he wanted it to, and remain a pristine collection.

So, he saved. The entirety of the funds he earned from public appearances, and much of his royalties too. The television series that bought the rights to _Kill Creek_ had afforded him both a new car and had padded his savings account nicely. The same network was now sniffing around about _The Stranger_ , and Hux would probably sell. Authors sometimes did events gratis, especially youth-centered events, but the youth were not Hux’s readers (or at least shouldn’t be) and Hux was opposed to not making honest money for honest work, so he did not. Just because answering the same pesky fifty questions and signing his name didn’t fit the concept of work as he’d been raised to understand it didn’t mean it wasn’t. Brendol could just go on stewing over it. Hux was sitting on a cool million, and more in the stock market.

Other than his twelve hundred dollar and up fee, Hux had just one other requirement for a speaking engagement: that he be able to drive there with not more than one overnight stop on the way. He hardly left New England, as a result. One night on the way there and one night on the way back was acceptable, more was not. Millicent, his fat orange tabby cat, hated to be left alone too long and made that plain upon Hux’s return, looking at him with affronted little green eyes and making generous use of her pointy claws on his lap once they settled down onto the sofa. Phasma looked after Millicent in his absence, of course, he’d never leave her to fend for herself. But Phasma was only barely an acceptable substitute. Millicent was very clear on that point.

It wasn’t that Hux was afraid of flying, or that he was hesitant to bill that expense to the organization that hosted him, just as he billed them for his motel rooms (never elegant, he didn’t scalp them). He just hated the _indignity_ of flying commercial airlines -- the cramped spaces, the intolerable rush and then wait. And the inescapable reality that he was not in charge. Once you entered an airport, the airline staff told you to jump and you had to ask ‘how high?’ or you wouldn’t board, and after boarding you had to trust your schedule and all your possessions including your most valuable one, your _life_ , to total strangers.

He knew that driving was far less safe, and that he truly didn’t have control on the roads either. A drunk could come flying across the median at a hundred miles per hour and twist the engine of his car into his guts. The drunk would live; they always seemed to. But behind the wheel he had the _illusion_ of control, and that illusion was a siren song he could not resist. And he liked to drive. He liked the engine’s answer to the slightest pressure of his smart leather oxfords on the pedal. It was soothing. He had some of his best ideas when he was on the highway, cruise control on and the radio off.

“You were a long-haul trucker in your last incarnation,” Phas teased him once. Hux didn’t believe in past lifetimes or future ones, on earth or in some great beyond, but the idea of him driving a big rig was amusing. He might have been tall enough, but he weighed a hundred and fifty pounds soaking wet, and he was well aware that everyone who saw him assumed (correctly) that he’d as soon take another man home as a woman. States had begun to roll sodomy laws back in the 60s, but those laws would not be declared unconstitutional altogether until 2003, which Armitage Hux almost did not live to see. Maine, his current state of address, had struck down its sodomy law in 1975, but that wouldn’t save your skin if you were being followed out of a bar by a group of raucous hecklers after dark circa ’85. If the wrong greased-up alpha male thought you were making eyes at him you’d get your lip split, and no one would pity an uppity queer who got his ass handed to him. The ones who had the good grace not to say it out loud still thought it, and sometimes you could see it in their eyes. Hux had seen it last night in the eyes of the reporter on channel five as she recounted the discovery of the latest body, a twenty-three year old man discovered raped and strangled within a canal in Bangor. Battered and broken and _blamed_. That’s what happened to queers. It was the only possible outcome of daring to live a life that provokes violence by its very existence.

After Hux’s Bangor Library appearance, he would remember the news story and the look on the reporter’s face, and he would think it was funny. But not the sort of funny you laugh at. The invitation from the Bangor Public Library fit Hux’s specifications exactly. Bangor was less than fifty miles from his flat in Bar Harbor, and it was a daytime appearance (he’d be back to feed Millicent dinner), and they offered fifteen hundred dollars. The call, which Hux took on his landline with the red phone cord twirled around his finger, had come from a man who identified himself only as Ren. He explained that he was the head librarian, and Hux thought he hadn’t sounded like a librarian and said as much, and Ren laughed and admitted he’d run a mechanic’s shop most his life. Ren went on to say that he organized an author’s lecture at the library once a month, and the events were very popular. Rey Solana had been scheduled for October 12th but had to cancel because of a family matter -- a funeral on her husband’s side. Hux vaguely remembered Rey Solana and the husband, a Black man named Finn who’d been unfriendly to him at the author’s conference where he’d made his rival’s acquaintance. Because Rey _was_ his rival, though he wouldn’t have uttered that word out loud. They published in the same genre, and critics often compared their work. Hux had said in an interview once that he didn’t believe there was a comparison, a comment which the reporter gleefully twisted and which probably explained Finn’s distaste for him.

“I know this is short notice,” said Ren, “but I remembered the paper did a profile on you because you live just southeast of us, and I’m in a pinch. You’d have my undying gratitude if you came.”

Hux doubted that said gratitude would last even the length of the event, and he already had an event lined up for the end of October, but Bangor was close. A straight shot up the interstate, and Millicent would hardly know he was gone. Hux made sure that Ren was aware he would sign autographs for no more than one hour. It crossed Hux’s mind to say that perhaps two thousand dollars would be more appropriate, given that he was being called in for triage (and also, if he admitted it to himself, because he had been the second choice and it upset him), but he refrained from it. It was perhaps too cold-hearted even for him to take advantage of a public library. He accepted the date and the fifteen hundred dollar offer. It seemed fair.

Of course, when he was lying in a culvert in the middle of the cold October night naked from the waist down and bleeding from his broken nose, it didn’t seem fair at all. But would two thousand have? Or two billion? Whether you could put a price tag on pain and terror was not something that Hux had ever considered before, and once he had, he thought not.

  
  


Ren turned out to be a silver-haired man with a particularly handsome face and strange burns that peeked out from his collar and sleeves, perhaps the reason for his retirement from mechanic work. He was nearing sixty, but he was still broad-shouldered and strong. He gave Hux a handshake that made him wince, and instead of wishing Hux a pleasant morning or commenting on his appearance (Hux always wore a tailored navy suit with glittering diamond cufflinks to speaking engagements), Ren asked him brusquely whether he’d come by the highway. When Hux said he had, Ren clicked his tongue and shook his head.

“We can improve that situation, going back. I got a shortcut -- prettier _and_ faster. I’ll hook you up with directions after.” Ren said. Hux hummed neutrally. He didn’t like the idea of a stranger, even a particularly handsome one and even an aging librarian, knowing where he laid his head down at night. But Ren persisted. “Bar Harbor, right? I can shave ten miles off, easy. I saw that fancy knick-knack on your dash. Since you’ve got a GPS, I’ll program it.” Hux did have one on his sleek little Audi’s dashboard.

“Alright,” Hux said. Ren clapped him on the shoulder, squeezing once before he released his grip, and Hux’s fate was decided.

The only way in which Hux’s Bangor Public Library appearance differed from any other was Ren’s introduction. It was so succinct as to be terse. He felt no need to mention Hux’s London upbringing or his brief tenure at his father’s munitions company (a controversial tidbit of Hux’s history, here in the states where the Cold War was just drawing to a close and foreign weapons manufacturers were suspect, even the British ones). Ren did not feel the need to produce praise for Hux’s novels, either, which was good because the comparison to Rey Solana’s work would have almost certainly come up at this event. Ren simply said that _Kill Creek_ was hugely popular (an overstatement, though one Hux appreciated) and that Hux had been extremely generous in donating his time (it was not a donation). Then Ren yielded the podium for Hux to address the hundred or so Bangor locals that had wandered into the library’s auditorium, a glass confection that had warmed with the near-noon light. The audience had obviously been attracted by the previous advertisements, and was largely composed of the sort of older women that wore hats out to the library, more predisposed to liking Rey’s cozy mysteries -- the sort of whodunits with one body in the drawing room -- than his own bloodsoaked thrillers.

Hux gave the same speech he’d given a hundred times, consisting of sparse personal anecdotes (none too personal), and a play-by-play of his writing process (back, front, middle) and then a publishing story about _Kill Creek_ . Not because Ren had mentioned it but because it was the book that got the tee-vee adaptation. When the floor opened for questions, he was asked the usual set. Where he got his ideas, which he always answered with _‘I follow the news. Lots of gruesome stuff out there, isn’t there?’_ That received lots of head nods and one “I’ll say” from the back of the room; the residents of Bangor were currently well-acquainted with gruesome, in the midst of a serial killing spree which hadn’t yet been solved. Hux did follow the news, but no more than the average man. In truth, he felt that his ideas came to him from a cold and yawning hole in his subconscious, whispered there so insistently that they’d drive him mad if he didn’t commit them to paper. One particularly bright-eyed attendee asked him how you get an agent, to which Hux said you kept writing letters until one of the hungrier ones decided to see how you taste. He was asked if he drew his characters from people in his life (“Oh yes, my friends and family, though I refuse to tell them who’s who.”) -- another lie. The characters, like everything else in the books, simply badgered him until he had to write them out or risk them cracking their way through his skull themselves.

The last act of the visit was autograph time, and Hux dutifully inscribed messages to the attendees or their loved ones on sheets of paper with his favorite fountain pen (thirteen or so had brought copies of his books from their personal collections for him to sign, a dismally low number that smarted like a papercut on his pride). When the autographs had been signed and the last lingerer asked their remaining questions, Ren accompanied Hux back to his car.

Once Hux was seated, having rolled the window down for those directions, Ren reached in and tucked an envelope into Hux’s suit pocket, no doubt containing his check. Presumptuous, like the shoulder-grab before the event had been, and pleasant. It was pleasant to be ogled by an attractive man. There was no other word for what Ren was doing now that the parking lot was emptier, more secluded. Hux preened under the attention, giving Ren a smirk. He wouldn’t stay to let Ren put those weathered mechanic’s hands on him or to see how extensive the older man’s burns really were -- Millicent was waiting -- but he wouldn’t turn away a good flirtation. And Ren was good at it. He leaned into the window to program Hux’s GPS for him, an unnecessary action. Hux could have removed it from the dash. Ren smelled like cheap cologne, his cheek next to Hux’s cheek and a lock of his long silver hair tickling Hux’s neck.

“You’ll take 24 down to Knight’s Cross, that’s an old road. Hardly used now, but not too bumpy, and it’s scenic. You’ll ramble along for sixteen miles or so and then come out on 87. You won’t need the interstate until the last 12 miles into Bar Harbor. Save yourself some time and some traffic.”

“Thank you,” said Hux, and Ren backed out of his space with palpable regret, his piercing blue eyes lingering on Hux’s lips.

“No thanks necessary. You earned it,” said Ren, and Hux would not think until later that it was an odd thing to say. The abandoned store with it’s blinking neon sign was still tucked away ninety minutes into his future like a snake in high grass.

  
  


Hux liked toys of all varieties. Guns, sex toys (he had collections of both neatly hidden from sight at home), and of course the GPS. He shelled out an exorbitant sum for a customized one. When he pulled onto the road the GPS said “Hello Hux, I see we’re taking a trip.”

“Yes we are. It’s a good day for it, don’t you think?” Hux responded. Of course, even the best GPS money can buy is leagues away from the computers in science fiction, and Hux’s GPS was poorly equipped for conversation. Sometimes Hux helped it out, just like he helped Millicent out when her little feline tongue was tied. “Perfect day for it,” said Hux. And it was; dreary October weather was perhaps his favorite. The leaves were beginning to turn, and the occasional spray of bright red appeared within green-going-orange as the car looped lazily along the path Ren had set.

He was soon on the edge of Bangor, but the GPS sent him silently on by the on-ramp for the interstate. After ten miles or so through breathtaking woods, where the scent of leaves even made it into the car without the windows open, Hux began to wonder whether his GPS was mistaken (as if such a thing were possible, but Hux hated depending on anyone or anything else) when its mechanical voice spoke up again.

“In one mile, turn right onto Knight’s Cross.”

When Hux got there, the road sign was so faded and pocked with shotgun pellets as to be illegible, but of course the GPS didn’t need signs. _You’ll ramble for sixteen miles_ , Ren had said in his smoky voice, but Hux rambled only fourteen. He came around a curve and spied an old dilapidated building ahead on his left, and was so distracted by the blink of old neon that he didn’t see the debris in the road until it was too late. There were several large pieces of wood scattered across the road, with rusty nails jutting out of them. His car bounced across the pothole that had probably bumped the wooden planks free from the back of some hillbilly’s old truck where they’d been carelessly unsecured. He veered for the shoulder to try and get around them, knowing already that he was too late and cursing under his breath.

There was a clunk-clack-thud beneath the Audi that made Hux suck in a worried breath as the left front tire struck the wood, throwing it up against the undercarriage. Then the car was pulling to the left. Hux wrestled it into the weedy parking lot of the abandoned store, wanting to get off the road so that the next distracted driver wouldn’t plow into him. He hadn’t seen much traffic on Knight’s Cross, but there had been a couple of large trucks with logos on them he hadn’t paid any attention to.

“Fucking goddamn you, Ren,” he said, though he knew that wasn’t fair. Ren had only been trying to be helpful, or maybe to get in Hux’s pants, but Hux didn’t know the name of the dumbass that cluttered the road with his nail-studded shit, so Ren’s name sufficed. He turned his GPS off and shut off the engine. He wasn’t going anywhere for awhile. If it was only one tire, he could change it. He was already getting tense at the idea of changing a tire in one of his nice suits, but he could do it. If it was more than one, well…. The nearest payphone was not likely to be on the side of the paint-stripped hovel in front of him. He got out of the car and slammed the door.

It was quiet out here. He heard faint birdsong, the metallic ticking sound of the neon sign as it seized, and nothing else. No approaching car. Not yet. The good news was that the Audi was noticeably leaning to the left-front instead of the whole left. Hux knelt next to it. A long and splintered piece of wood was impaled on the tire by a large iron spike.

“Fuck,” Hux spat, the sight of it still enraging though one tire was the best possible outcome. He would be lucky to get home before dark now, and he hadn’t even bothered asking Phasma to feed Millicent her serving of wet food in the event of his absence. Millie would have to be content with the bowl of dry food he’d left out (just in case, just in case of what? Well here it was.) He fought off the urge to curse Ren aloud again. The same thing could have happened to him on the interstate; he’d seen his fair share of detritus there too.

The conventions of horror stories, from the sophisticated mysteries Rey Solana penned to the more explicit tales Hux wrote (once referred to memorably as _horrorbooks_ by a critic, the same way one would say sexbooks), stayed the same. So, as Hux stood on the side of a deserted road with a crippled car, he thought, _In a story, I’d meet the Bangor Ripper_.

At that instant, he heard an engine approaching, coming up the lane just as he had. He trotted out into the road -- he was reasonably sure the vehicle wouldn’t fly around the corner and strike him, at least if it was going the speed limit -- and tossed the debris in the road aside before it could impale another poor traveler’s chariot. He did so quickly but carefully, as it was apparent that every piece of wood had nails in it. Big, ugly ones. They were all painted the same sickly shade of gray, too. He cast them into the ditch and returned safely to the weedy lot next to his own leaning car and looked at it moodily. Thirty thousand dollars worth of steel, and all it took was a piece of wood stripped from someone’s home renovation project to leave you stranded.

 _Wood with nails, not just wood. Give the Audi some credit. And they ALL had nails. And they were camouflaged. I bet the paint color was named ‘asphalt’. In one of my books, that wouldn’t constitute an accident. It’d be a plan. A trap_. Too much imagination, whispering from the cold pit that all his stories whispered themselves from. His imagination provided him his daily bread (along with this car, and his GPS, and his flat in Bar Harbor. Not that he didn’t have an inheritance, but he didn’t rely on it) but this wasn’t the time for a chilling tale.

The engine was getting closer, winding around the country road. Hux thought it was another truck. That seemed to be all anyone drove around here. It hadn’t yet drowned out the ticking of the old sign. This abandoned store (for that’s what it had once been, judging by the faded First Order General sign on the front) was not the sort that had been in operation in many years, outside rural pit stops and quaint tourist towns where New York City big wigs took their families out to get some fresh air. It had a porch out front. The far corner of it had already collapsed and the railing was broken in a couple spots, but it was a porch. Still charming, somehow. Hux supposed that the old custom of the general store porch had gone obsolete because it encouraged you to lean around and chat instead of pay for your goods and get out. The blinking sign read, RED WHITE & YOU, which advertised what exactly? The patriotism wasn’t lost on Hux. Americans showed their love for their country with their credit cards. The picture that had once been painted above the glowing letters had faded entirely, but the answer was at the tip of Hux’s tongue. He remembered this advert vaguely.

The engine turned the corner at last, and Hux whirled around, already lifting an arm up to flag down the driver. It came putting around the corner at a glacial pace. An old Ford F-150 with the windows down and a bad custom paint job suited more to the side of a wanderer’s van, some kind of black and patchy space scene with hazy planets and a triangular UFO. There was Bondo putty around the headlights. A man in black with a baseball cap sat behind the wheel. He stopped the truck in the middle of the road with a squeal of his brakes just before he encountered the harmless splinters Hux had left there, and then his face swung out toward the ditch where Hux had chucked the mess, and then it swiveled back, a look of surprise on it. He had big features, wide eyes and plush lips, and they had softened in confusion at the sight of the trash on the side of the road.

“Hello!” Hux called from the parking lot, waving. “Pardon me? Sir?” The man saw him, raised his hand off the wheel in a salut, and pulled into the defunct lot next to Hux’s Audi. He turned off his rumbling engine, and the world went quiet again.

“Hey there,” he said. “You take that crap off the road?”

“All but the piece that got my tire,” Hux told him.

“I’ll change it for ya if you got a spare,” the man said. His voice was pleasantly deep, and he opened his door now, jumping out of his truck. Hux saw now that his features matched the rest of him. He was big. More than that, he was huge. For a moment Hux couldn’t reply, busy taking in the sheer size of the fellow. Hux was tall, and this man was perhaps one or two inches taller. He couldn’t weigh less than two hundred pounds, and his muscles bulged in the black mechanic’s jumpsuit he wore. Ren back at the library had been a healthy specimen, but he would look elegant next to this man.

The man chuckled at Hux’s silence. “Didn’t think you’d meet the Jolly Green Giant out here, did you? Kylo.” He stuck out a hand, and it, too, was big. Hux took it, his own fine-boned hand nearly eclipsed. This giant wasn’t green, though, Hux thought. He was almost rendered in black and white, except for his eyes. And lips. Those were pink. White skin, black moles like little reverse-stars more finely painted on than the ones on the side of his truck. Hair such a dark brown that the cloudy day rendered it inky beneath his ball cap. His eyes, though, were a warm golden brown. They crinkled at the edges when he smiled.

“I’m sorry,” Hux said, abashed. “I was just thinking that you don’t drive that vehicle of yours. You wear it. I’m Hux, and I do have a spare tire with me.”

Kylo laughed, showing off his teeth. They were crooked, but very white. “Haven’t heard that one,” he said.

“I’d be happy to pay you,” Hux offered. Kylo was already walking around to check out the busted tire without being told which one. The listing of the car to the left-front _was_ rather obvious. Hux followed.

“I’ll do it for free,” Kylo rumbled. “You saved me the same problem getting that shit out of the road.”

 _No, you were going slow enough. And paying attention,_ Hux thought, but he didn’t disagree out loud. He could push the issue of payment again once they were parting ways, and if Kylo refused again that was his prerogative.

“The spare is in the boot,” said Hux. “Just pull--”

“Pull up on the handle. Been there,” Kylo flashed him another wide grin. Hux left him to it, turning around and taking in the side of Kylo’s truck again with it’s funny planets. He’d left his door slightly ajar, and the interior truck light was on. Thinking that the F-150’s battery might be just as upcycled as the rest of it, Hux approached the door, swung it open with a loud creak, and slammed it shut solidly. As he did so, he saw into the cab. Within the footwell of the passenger side, Hux saw a stack of pieces of gray-painted wood with long and gnarled nails sticking out of them.

He felt that he left his body briefly. Not floating above himself, but pulling his consciousness back into just his brain to hide so that he couldn’t feel his fingers or toes. He tried to tell himself that the wood meant nothing. Stuff like that only meant something inside the books he wrote and the movies he watched with Phasma once a week on their designated movie night, complete with wine and popcorn. The nasty, bloody kind. The ticking RED WHITE & YOU sign didn’t sound like a clock anymore. It sounded like a bomb. Pretending that he hadn’t seen what he had wasn’t an option, which left him with only two: confront Kylo, a bad idea if Hux knew one when he thought it, or run for the woods.

Hux twitched his fingers, coming back into his body. Before he could bolt, he felt Kylo behind him. One of those big hands closed around his hip, the thumb rubbing a circle over the tailored fabric. Hux could smell him, not cheap cologne but unadulterated mansweat. He turned, twisting out of Kylo’s grasp. The only direction to go was back, and so Hux backed into the side of the truck. Kylo loomed over him, and said pleasantly, “Instead of changing your tire, I could fuck you. How about that?”

Hux thought that not two hours before he’d been standing in a sunlit library rehashing talking points he knew by heart to politely disinterested applause, and that somewhere southeast of here Millie was waiting on him. He might never see his cat again. “Please don’t kill me,” someone said, someone whose voice was sickeningly pleading. Hux realized it was him. The sign went on ticking.

Kylo wore a metal cross on a chain around his neck, and the cross was red anodized aluminum. It shone like a child’s idea of a precious stone. Or like blood in sunlight. The sign ticked RED WHITE & YOU. One of Kylo’s big hands turned into a fist and came speeding at Hux’s face until it blotted out everything else. Hux thought, _he’s bruised his knuckles somehow_ . Then the back of Hux’s skull collided with the side of the truck with a muffled metallic bang, and Hux thought: _Oh, that’s how_. Then he slept.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW- this chapter contains rape. No physical injuries are sustained directly from the rape, but it is described and thought of candidly.

He came to in a large and shadowy room that smelled of damp wood, mildewy carpet, and ancient stale coffee beans. The rotting carpet smell was at the forefront, because he’d been thrown facedown on top of several cut up squares of it. His suit jacket was gone, as was everything below his waist. The tile (must have been under the carpet, and who puts carpet in a general store? His brain supplied helpfully) was cold and hard against his knees and feet. He felt sluggish and sick, like he might hurl. Pain radiated out from his nose and from a spot at the back of his skull that he knew he would hardly be able to touch when he washed his hair. If he ever washed his hair again, because it wasn’t over. He was far from alone. He was, perhaps, the very least alone he’d been in the past eight months, because Kylo was eating his ass like he was starving for it.

Hux made a sound somewhere between a groan and a moan, feeling that life had sharpened into its extremes while he was unconscious, and weakly tried to get one of his spread legs under him to sit up. Kylo’s tongue slid hot and slick and velvety over and into him once more, and then those big hands were on his back, holding him down.

“Easy,” Kylo warned.

“Let me go,” Hux said automatically. It was more slurred and less authoritative than he’d have liked. His nose hurt worse when he moved his face.

“If you think that’s how this works, you’re stupid.” Kylo was still holding him down with one hand, fumbling with something off to the side with the other. It was infuriating that one hand alone was working.

Hux shifted, trying futilely to squirm to the side. He craned his neck to look back at his captor. Kylo had stripped his jumpsuit down off his torso, just in a black tank now. His shoulders and arms looked sculpted from marble, and Hux grudgingly accepted that it made sense one arm was all Kylo needed to hold his own reedy frame down.

“You be quiet and I’ll make you feel good.” Kylo said. Hux saw that he’d been slicking his fingers in a jar of oil. Kylo drove one of those thick fingers into Hux now. Hux gasped at the sudden intrusion, but it only barely stung. Kylo was doing a meticulous and almost tender job of opening him up, especially considering the fact that Hux was ninety percent sure the man was the Bangor Ripper. The wooden planks hadn’t been the work of an opportunist, anyway. There was a certain degree of planning here, which meant— as if picking up on the thought, Kylo said, “No one’s out here to hear you, I just prefer quiet. So you behave, and I will.”

Two fingers now. Kylo scissored them open and Hux stifled another moan in the back of his throat, squeezing his eyes shut in shame when Kylo’s plush lips trembled. Three fingers. The stretch was equal to the biggest of Hux’s toys, but there was no hope of pretending he was home. Or with someone he’d chosen, because Armitage Hux would never elect to hook up in such a disgusting locale. Four, and now this was getting obscene. Cruel. It felt good, and that was the cruelest part.

Kylo moaned this time, watching his digits push into Hux’s body. The sound was low and rich, and Hux’s cock had already been traitorously twitching with interest, but now it stiffened. “You like that?” Kylo asked. Hux was sure his ears were burning red. His neck and back and chest were probably getting pink too. Kylo’s fingers withdrew and he was fumbling off to the side again, getting more slick to use.  _ Three guesses as to what he’s slapping it on _ , Hux thought morosely.

Kylo flipped him over. The pile of carpet was just as uncomfortable on his back, but now he had more to look at. The old ceiling fan had a broken blade. They were behind the old store’s counter, and there were in fact tins of ancient coffee stored below two prehistoric coffee makers. Golden notes of dust floated down lazily in the late afternoon sunlight, and it would only be the late afternoon wouldn’t it? The event at the Bangor Public Library had been a morning one. Somewhere near to this place, not near enough to hear a scream but not any further than a fifteen minute drive and probably closer than that, people were going about their days. They were watching TV or shopping in stores much newer than this one, or talking on their phones with the cord twirled around their fingers, but right here Hux was being raped. That’s what it was when someone knocked your lights out and then pulled your trousers down and licked you open. Whether it felt good or not, and whether your prick got hard or not, and even though Hux was strangely grateful not to be simply torn open and left incontinent, he was being raped. Kylo had taken Hux’s boxers — an expensive navy silk pair, he always wore that sort beneath his nice suits — and stuffed them into one of his jumpsuit pockets. A small bunch of the silk stuck out like a blue tongue. A dead one.

Kylo drew his cock out of his jumpsuit, pulling down the boxers beneath —  _ Star Wars, really?  _ — and it was so massive that Hux’s next swallow was audible. That thing was  _ not _ going in him. Hux sat up, the rough edges of the carpet squares scraping his ass, got purchase on his bare feet, and tried to stumble up and run for it. Kylo tackled him back down, hooting with laughter as if Hux had told him another joke he hadn’t heard before.  _ Are you driving your truck, or wearing it, Kylo? Are you living your life, or leaving it, Hux? _

“That’s not behaving,” Kylo said, and pummeled Hux again. The side of his face went hot and he heard a click — his teeth knocking together in his face, mercifully without his tongue between them. He blacked out.

  
  


The next time he came to, he was aware that Kylo was fucking him just like he’d suggested in a very pleasant tone of voice outside, but being fucked was secondary to being smothered. Kylo had settled his considerable bulk on top of Hux, and was crushing him. A carpet square was in a bad spot on his back, making it ache.

“No more,” said Hux, talking more about the weight than about the cock thrusting back and forth within him like well-oiled machinery.

“Almost,” said Kylo, his voice thick with pleasure and strangely apologetic. Also muffled and very close, but that had an explanation: he’d buried his face in Hux’s neck. His next thrust hit Hux’s prostate and Hux moaned aloud, too late to catch that one and hold it in. “Fuck, baby,” Kylo said, and then jerked his hips forward once more and stilled. Hux felt the base of Kylo’s cock twitching against his rim with the pulses of an orgasm.

Hux shivered when Kylo pulled out, the sudden emptiness a reminder of just how big Kylo was. Hux’s body had adapted and now equilibrium shifted again. The light streaming in through the windows was burning orange. Sunset. It lit up Kylo’s peculiar eyes, making them look wolfish.

“Are you gonna go to the police?” Kylo asked. Hux shook his head numbly. “Yeah,” said Kylo. “You’re right.” He wrapped his big hands around Hux’s throat and squeezed. Hux tore at them with his own and couldn’t budge the grip. He felt his face get hot. He knew his skin was going pink and then red. He choked. He couldn’t breathe. His efforts to do so sounded like weeping. The room seemed to darken, the sun setting in twice the speed it should. Hux thought,  _ it’s over _ . It was almost comforting. Millie would adjust. Phasma would adopt her, Hux was sure of it.

  
  


The world was black and silver, and Hux thought,  _ I didn’t want an afterlife. _ Then he registered the hands on the back of his thighs, the pressure of a shoulder in his gut, the circlet of burning pain around his throat. He wasn’t dead, but he would be wearing the shadow of Kylo’s hands like a necklace for days. It was night, and the full moon was up. Hux was being carried over Kylo’s shoulder across the parking lot in front of the store. He could see Kylo’s truck, but his Audi was gone. The sign was still ticking. RED WHITE & YOU.

Kylo stopped at the edge of the road. Hux could smell his sweat. It was sharper now.  _ Well, he’s been exercising. Does he think I’m dead? _ He could feel the night cold on his bare legs, and the rise and fall of Kylo’s chest under him. He tried to make his own breaths shallow and silent, because surely Kylo would be able to feel his too.  _ He can’t think I’m dead. He’s not a rookie, if he’s who I think he is. _

Nevertheless, Hux lay limp in Kylo’s arms, feeling like a victim in a horror movie. The one that gets knocked out and carried off to swing on a meat hook. Kylo got moving again. Hux could hear his work shoes on the pavement, and then the scrape and clatter as he kicked the boards Hux had tossed to the far side. The ticking sign was gone, but now Hux could hear a trickle of running water. Kylo knelt down and dropped Hux gently to the earth. Hux kept his eyes half-closed and tried to stay boneless.

“Hey, baby,” Kylo said in a low voice. Then, “Hux.”

Hux almost flinched. He’d nearly forgotten introducing himself. He stayed still. He could see Kylo leaning over him and looking close. Hux took great care to keep his eyes still. If Kylo saw them move, even a little….

“Hey,” Kylo nudged Hux’s face with the flat of his hand. Hux let his head loll away. Kylo slapped him, going the other way. Hux let his head roll back. Kylo pinched his nipple through his pale blue button-down. It didn’t hurt much. Hux stayed limp. “I’m sorry.” Kylo said, and his voice was strange. He did sound sorry, but there was a razor’s edge to it. “You were good, mostly. Didn’t even scream. I like them a little older, you know. You felt good. I hope I felt good.” Kylo leaned down and kissed Hux’s lips. “Sorry I was rough.”

_ He might actually think I’m dead _ .

Kylo was grabbing Hux’s limbs then and shunting him up through the leaves. There was a smell of rotting vegetation. Kylo picked him up again and set him down in five inches of ice-cold water. It was all Hux could do to keep his face blank and his breaths shallow.

“Fuck,” Kylo said, and he sounded mostly regretful now. Wasn’t that funny? Not the sort of funny you laugh at, though. “You’re really pretty.” Then he shoved Hux again. Hux remained limp even when a branch scrawled a signature of red-hot pain down the center of his back. Spongy wet leaves bunched up under him, and the rotting vegetable scent intensified. It was thick. Hux did not cough in distaste. Cold water soaked the back of his shirt and hair and trickled into his ears. He thought he heard Kylo making noise, too. Sobbing.

_ If he figures it out now, I’ll fight. I’ll probably lose but I’ll fight _ . Hux wanted very badly to live. He braced himself to be discovered and hauled back out and finished off, but nothing happened. Nothing happened for a very long time. He did not open his eyes wider. He did not even blink until there was no choice, and then simply closed them, sure it would be his undoing. He imagined Kylo standing there and watching him, looking into the corrugated metal pipe where he’d stashed him, his head to the side and warm golden-brown eyes trained on Hux, waiting for a little mistake just like that. How could Kylo not know he was alive? He hadn’t checked for a pulse, but surely he felt Hux’s heart when he carried him? Or the warmth of his skin?

Hux lay in the rotting leaves and cold water, concentrating on playing dead. He passed into a fugue that was not quite sleep only because it was also terror, and he stayed there for what seemed years but was probably minutes. He heard a motor start. The truck?  _ No. I’m imagining that sound. He’s still here. He’s still watching _ . But the purr of the motor swelled, and then faded. Going back down Knight’s Cross in the direction they’d both come from.  _ It’s a trick _ . Hux thought, and then reprimanded himself.  _ You can’t stay here all night. It’s cold, for one. And he might come back. He left, that was his truck and he left, but he might come back _ .

He opened his eyes and looked down toward the opening of the pipe, wincing at the stab of pain in his throat when he lifted his head up. It was a clear, round circle of moonlit woods. Like a painting.  _ It’s a trick. He stepped to the side and a car went by and it’s a trick. He’s still here _ . Hux shook his head at himself. He’d heard the truck start. But the idea was powerful, and seeing nothing at the mouth of the pipe made it stronger. If Hux were writing this novel, this would be the moment of apprehension before the big scare. In fact, he might use it that way if he ever wrote another word. Kylo  _ could _ still be there, just beyond the pipe, if he’d had an accomplice drive his car away. Five minutes passed. Hux began to shiver. Soon his teeth would start chattering and if Kylo was out there, he’d hear that.

Maybe Hux didn’t need to leave the pipe the way he came in. The water was trickling, after all, so it wasn’t blocked. It ran under the road, and he could come out on the other side. That was near First Order General, which seemed just as bad as this side.  _ A building can’t hurt you _ . An accomplice could, but Hux felt reasonably sure there wasn’t one. An accomplice would have wanted a turn at him, and a man as big as Kylo could work alone.

Hux could crawl through the pipe to the store. And then what? He didn’t know. The immediate future was hazy. He’d do something, something that would get him home, and then he’d feed Millicent. Hux carefully turned over onto his belly, getting up on his elbows to crawl, and then saw what he was sharing the culvert with.

One of the corpses was nearly a skeleton. The other might have been a badly defaced department store mannequin, except for its protruding blue tongue. Fresh. Screaming hoarsely, Hux scrambled back out of the pipe and fell to the ground. He was naked from the waist down and soaked from the waist up in water that had run beneath the corpses that had come before. He did not pass out, or at least didn’t think he did, but he passed an indeterminable length of time in a broken state. Looking back on it, he thought of it like a darkened stage with a spotlight. Every so often a disheveled man with a broken nose and haunted eyes wandered into the spotlight and then back out. There was no audience. Or at least he hoped there wasn’t. If there was, it was an audience of one.

  
  


He went back into the store. There was a beer cooler running the length of the wall. Hux’s suit jacket was nowhere to be found, but he fished his trousers and shoes out from under the counter. No socks. Maybe Kylo had stuffed those in another pocket. He was very sure now that Kylo would be back. He didn’t see any other personal items here, at least. From the others. Kylo would be coming back to retrieve Hux’s trousers and shoes, and probably those boards too. They’d still been by the road. Hux had been very careful not to trod on them with his bare feet. Kylo would want those back. They were still functional. Waste not want not. Hux went away again.

  
  


He walked behind the store in the moonlight. He was shivering. His teeth were chattering, and that was bad, but he couldn’t remember why. It came to him that he was  _ circling _ the store. It might be his fourth go-round. Maybe more. He was looking for his Audi, which was not in front of the store, which meant that Kylo had changed the tire. It wasn’t out back either, but Hux kept forgetting and circling back. He forgot because he’d been punched in the face more than once, and one of those times had been straight into the side of a car. He’d been punched and raped and choked and he was in shock. That sounded reasonable. Maybe his brain was bleeding. How would he know? Hux shrugged to himself in the cold. He walked around the store again to the front. The neon sign tink-tink-tinked and blinked on and off, RED WHITE & YOU.

“Coca-Cola,” Hux said hoarsely. Being choked had given his voice a surprisingly pleasant rasp. Well, if you were going to be raped and left for dead in a pipe by a notorious serial killer, something good should come of it. “Red, white, and you. Coca-Cola. That’s what it is.”

  
  


He was sitting on the porch of First Order General and crying his eyes out. Big, ugly sobs like a child. He knew his face was crumpled up in that way that used to make his father ball up his fists and sneer down at him. His throat ached and burned. There was a sour taste in his mouth. Bile, but he didn’t remember vomiting. The ache in his backside was almost pleasant, hardly different from the after-effect that any of Hux’s previous sexual partners had on him. But Kylo had been very courteous with that aspect of it, hadn’t he? And that was funny, wasn’t it? But not the kind of funny you laughed at, so Hux cried.

_ I was raped _ .

“You aren’t the first,” he told himself in the night with his raspy voice. “You won’t be the last.” It was tough love, the effect somewhat lost when the words were bracketed by sobs. It was also true, both in a worldly sense and in the more immediate one.

_ He tried to kill me. He almost killed me. _

“Yes, he did,” Hux rasped.

_ He killed others. Found and unfound. They’re in the pipe! They’re in the pipe and they’ll never go home to their cats! _

“Yes.”

  
  


He was walking down the center of Knight’s Cross and singing. Snippets of  _ Total Eclipse of the Heart _ , whatever he could remember of it. Not quite the same without the electric guitars, but after being choked he had the Bonnie Tyler rasp down-pat.

Hux got to the line, “Your love is like a shadow--” and then cut himself off. A motor was approaching from behind. He whirled around, almost tripping and falling over his own feet, and saw headlights cresting the hill he’d just come over. It was him. Kylo had come back, had investigated the culvert after finding Hux’s trousers and shoes gone, and now he was looking for him. Hux bolted down into the ditch and nearly dove into the bushes there. A branch scratched his cheek. He could hear a man sobbing with fear and knew Kylo would hear it too; he drove with his windows down. Kylo would hear it and stop, and get out of his truck. Hux would try to run but Kylo would catch him. Hux would scream but no one would hear him. That’s how this type of story went. Kylo would kill him this time, but he’d probably rape him again first. Probably this time it would hurt.

The car went by without slowing. It  _ was _ a car, not an F-150. Hux watched the taillights go up the road and blink out of sight like two red eyes, and felt himself starting to leave the spotlight again. He slapped his cheeks with both hands until they stung, and came back to the present a little. Part of him wanted to stay right here until first light, but morning was a long way off, and not safer. He’d been raped in the afternoon light. Midnight was probably a long way off, though he felt it had been years since he set out from Bar Harbor. The moon was still low. He couldn’t wait till morning, and he couldn’t keep spacing out. Distractedly, he rolled his sleeves up to the elbows, and then thought,  _ my cufflinks are gone _ . Of course they were. He hoped that Kylo knew what he had taken. Those gems weren’t paste. That  _ was _ the sort of thing you laughed at, so Hux did. He felt better afterward, a resident of his own head and body instead of a specter.

He started to walk again. No more singing, though. It sounded creepy in his new voice, like Kylo had created a new man. Hux didn’t like that idea altogether. He had liked the old one. He returned to the road and walked with his shadow beside him. What road? Knight’s Cross. Kylo wore a cross. It’d been red. Tail-light-eye-red, that shade of red. Hux laughed again. If Ren had been right about the length of Knight’s Cross, Hux had run into Kylo’s trap only two miles from the 87, and two miles wasn’t a bad walk. Not bad at all. Of course this was his first walk as New Hux. But it wasn’t bad. He was warming up, drying out. Headlights in front of him.

Hux ducked off the road again, and another car passed without slowing.  _ It could be him. He could have more than one car _ . Kylo could have gone back to his house, his lair if Hux felt like waxing poetic, and changed vehicles thinking,  _ Hux wasn’t in the culvert, but he’ll see a car and run out to flag it down and then I’ll have him _ . That was possible. It’s what would happen in the story.  _ Knight’s Cross _ , tagline  _ There will be blood _ . Except there hadn’t really, except from his nose, which was anticlimactic. They’d workshop it. He’d credit Kylo in the author’s note.

Hux slapped himself again. Once he was home and Millicent was fed and coddled and he was in his own bed with all the doors and windows locked, and the burglar alarm armed and all the lights on, he could contextualize these horrors into fiction all he wanted. For now, he needed to keep walking and ducking from cars. If he did those two things, he would eventually come to a store, and the store would have a payphone. He clapped his hand to his back pocket then, already knowing what he’d find. Or rather wouldn’t find; his wallet was gone. Luckily he knew his calling-card number by heart, it was his landline plus 9623. He’d find a phone, and then... Then what?

“Call a limousine,” he said aloud, and then laughed again, because it was exactly what he would do. He used a limousine service when he had to go to the international airport for a visit to mum and dad. He’d call up the same service, it was 24-hour. He had a plan, and forced himself to walk a little faster. He thought of thanking the limo driver. He’d have to add a tip with credit, he had no cash. He’d thank the driver and walk up the path to his door and get the extra key from under the mat, and he’d hear Millie meowing anxiously from behind the door when he jiggled the key home.

The thought of Millicent helped the most, and he straightened his spine, striding more purposefully. He was still ready to duck out of sight if another car came by, especially if he heard the rumble of a truck approaching. He’d get off the road the very second that happened, because Kylo was still out there.

Hux realized that Kylo would always be out there.

He stopped cold where he stood, and his shoulders turned inward just a bit. Kylo would always be out there, unless he was caught. Unless the police caught him, which was unavoidable, right? But there had been a lot of victims so far, and two shoved in that pipe with Hux that he knew were yet uncounted. No, for Kylo to be caught Hux would have to report him. He saw a tabloid headline in glaring black font in his head:

“KILL CREEK” AUTHOR RAPED AFTER LECTURE

And the tabloids at least, if not the more respectable papers, would run the photo of him from seven years ago that still cropped up every now and then, the one from a friend’s birthday party in New York where he wore a shirt with a lace design in it, pale skin peeking through. It had been an exceptionally gay look, and not one meant for the public, but _ Starlight Killer _ had just made the bestseller list and a photographer flashed their lens at him and then sold the pictures. And the rest is history, as they say. The tabloids wouldn’t mention that he was now nearing his thirty-fifth birthday or that he was covered from ankle to collar to wrist today, before Kylo took part of his wardrobe anyway. Oh, the print would be respectful enough, but the picture would tell the real story. The reporter’s eyes from the Bangor Ripper segment on the television flashed in Hux’s memory, the eyes that said  _ It’s awful of course, what a way to go, but look at the facts. Pain or no pain, or LOTS of pain enough to go around come get your fill, it’s just a queer _ .

Would he go on hiding even when he made it back to his own flat in Bar Harbor and fed his cat? He didn’t know. What he did know was that if he didn’t, he’d get the nationwide coverage an author wants when he publishes a new book, and not when he gets raped and robbed and left for dead. He could visualize someone raising a hand during question time at his October 30th engagement and asking, “Did you in any way encourage him?”

_ Now you’re getting carried away _ . That was ridiculous, and even as he surfaced from the cold sea of shock Hux knew it. No one would have the gall to ask that to his face, not in those words. But someone would ask, “Are you going to write about this?” And even though Hux had been mapping out that novel perhaps since he’d picked the first nail-studded board up out of the road, he didn’t know what he would say onstage to a question like that. Maybe he’d run off weeping, and wouldn’t that be a sight?

No, Hux realized with a pit in his stomach, no one would ask that either, because he’d never do another speaking engagement again. How could he ever do another lecture, or reading, or autograph session, knowing that Kylo might turn up and sit in the back row in his black jumpsuit with his hands in his pockets? With Hux’s cufflinks between his fingertips, fondling them.

The thought of telling the police burned him. Maybe he wasn’t one of the greats, maybe he wasn’t even Rey fucking Solana, but he wasn’t unknown either. He’d be in the national news sooner or later, even just for a day or two, and he’d have headlines in London, and the whole world would know that the Bangor Ripper had shot his load inside the  _ Kill Creek _ novelist. Even the fact that Kylo had kept his boxers as a souvenir might come out eventually.

_ Sources say that investigators found the author’s undergarments inside the Bangor Ripper’s home, stained with semen from repeated use as the killer relived the attack. _

“I can’t tell,” Hux said to himself. “I won’t tell.”

_ But I wasn’t the first and I won’t be the la-- _

He pushed the thought away. He could confront morality later, if there was a later. He wouldn’t get it on this deserted road where his rapist might still be prowling. His. Kylo was his, now.


	3. Chapter 3

Hux at last approached a crossroad, and though he wasn’t a religious man he prayed it was the 87. It had a double yellow line down the center and a solitary street light high on it’s sun-bleached wooden pole white as bone in the night, and those were good signs. He heard a low, rhythmic thudding coming through the air. The beat of a bass guitar. The rest of the band came into existence as he walked forward and then down this new road. There was light on the horizon, not just more street lights but the blue and pink gleam of neon.

The band was playing a twangy roadhouse version of _Careless Whisper_ . He could hear laughter. It was drunken and raucous and beautiful. He felt like crying some more. When he came up on the building, he saw it _was_ a roadhouse, a big old wooden structure like a cross between an old-timey hotel and barn, with light streaming out of every window and a dirt parking lot packed to capacity. It had a porch. The neon sign just above the front doors, bubbling with patrons slipping in and out with cigarettes and plastic cups of beer in their hands, read THE KNI HT’S INN. The ‘G’ was out. At least it wasn’t flickering. Hux thought that if he had to hear that tinny tink-tink-tink again he’d go mad.

He looked at the parking lot, frowning, and then realized it was Friday night. Evidently The Knight’s Inn was the place to be on Friday night. They would have a phone in there, but there were too many people. They would see his broken nose and the collar of bruises around his neck, and they would ask what had happened to him. He could lie, but he didn’t want to tell prying strangers anything. And suppose someone recognized him? Even the payphone outside the bar was no good, because there was a group of people crowded around it waiting for their turn to call a ride home. The ends of their cigarettes glowed orange-hot in the night. God, Hux could go for a cigarette. But, no: too many people. Also….

Kylo could be there. He’d been only a little younger than Hux, probably late twenties, and most people in their late twenties liked music and alcohol. It was possible that after Kylo had driven off, he’d come here, sated and ready to zone out under the ministrations of a guitar and a warm beer.

The band launched into a perfectly passable rendition of _Eat Me Alive_ , which Hux could vaguely remember there being a stink over from the conservative press the year before. _Why not?_ Hux thought. _He shot from the hip, and I was equipped to take it all_. The old Hux would have frowned at that sentiment, but New Hux thought it was pretty goddamn funny. He barked out a laugh and turned away from The Knight’s Inn. Only a city block’s distance down the highway, he could see a Citgo with two payphones on the cinder block wall between the restrooms.

He used the gent’s room first, pissing down into the toilet bowl in a healthy rush. He hadn’t even realized he had to go. He tipped his head up and closed his eyes in near-ecstasy, and in the next second it was transformed to disgusted horror as he felt a distinctive trickle down the back of his thigh too. If he still had his boxers he would discard them now, but he didn’t. He’d have to go the rest of the way home with Kylo dripping out of him. “You bastard,” he croaked. He paused to look at the bruised and bloodied man in the mirror before he went out.

The first payphone didn’t work, and the second wasn’t encouraging -- it was slanted on the wall -- but when Hux put the receiver to his ear and pressed the button for the operator, it whined to life. Hux wrote the number the operator gave him in the dust on the phone box. He dialed it and waited, his heart in his throat, waiting for the bored dispatcher to tell him that they didn’t have any cars, or for no one to pick up at all. The phone was answered on the second ring, and the limousine dispatcher identified themselves as Mitaka. They did sound bored, but they said they would send a car right out. They sent cars to The Knight’s Inn all the time.

“I’m not there, I’m at the Citgo--”

“Yessir, I’ve got it. We send cars there, too. Phones were tied up at the Inn, huh? Forty-five minutes, maybe an hour.”

“That’s fine,” Hux said, and he was crying tears of gratitude this time.

“Your driver will be Thanisson.”

“Okay, thank you.” Hux almost expected Mitaka to ask him if he had a little too much to drink, because he certainly sounded that way, but Mitaka only asked if it would be cash or credit. Hux supposed thick voices were not unusual on the Friday night shift.

“It should be on the account.”

“Yessir, there you are. Thank you for calling First Order Limousine.”

The line went dead, and Hux stood for several seconds with the receiver still to his ear. He grunted, shook his head, and hung the payphone back up. _Got into limousines when the ol’ general died, I guess_ . He was hungry. He’d missed lunch and dinner. He’d been too busy, he thought, and didn’t laugh at it. Hux didn’t make a habit of snacking, but he’d be glad to have any of the packaged items they sold inside the gas station right now. He had no money, but even if he had, he wouldn’t have gone in. Gas station lights made even bright-eyed and pink-cheeked people without necklaces of bruises above their collars look half dead. The clerk might not say anything, but their eyes would widen and their mouth might twitch, because a skinny man with his clothes all wrinkled and his nose mashed in could be funny. Especially on a Friday night. _Oh man, who put the boot in you, huh?_

“It wasn’t a boot, actually.” Hux said, and then slumped against the wall. “Never mind. I’ll eat when I get home.” From in front of him came the sounds of music and voices, and from his left came the sound of the interstate he would have taken if he hadn’t been offered a shorter way home. On the turnpike, people who hadn’t been raped and stuffed in a pipe today were going places. Bangor, some of them. Bar Harbor, others. Hux thought that the haunting wail of tires on pavement at 55 miles per hour floating over to the cinder block wall of the Citgo was the loneliest sound he’d ever heard.

  
  


It went exactly as Hux had envisioned: the arrival, the thank you, the tip added to the credit card slip with a pen much worse than his favorite fountain pen, now probably riding along in the breast pocket of a sweat soaked black mechanic’s jumpsuit. Thanisson hadn’t said _who put the boot in you_ when he saw Hux, but he did ask if Hux wanted to make any stops on the way, his implication being the hospital. Hux had not wanted to, thank you.

Hux walked up the path to his front door and procured the extra key. Then he was inside, slamming the door behind him and locking it at once. Millie was twining around his ankles, screaming her need to be picked up and cuddled and fed. Hux did those things, but only after he set the burglar alarm for the first time in six months. He turned on every light as he passed it on the way to the kitchen. He looked at the clock on the microwave and felt his joints go rubbery when he saw it was only 11:45. While Millicent ate, Hux went around and checked all the other locks. Then, he went to the hall closet and pulled down the lockbox from the top shelf.

He loaded the gun inside, a .38 Smith & Wesson, leaving the first chamber empty and holding his finger not on the trigger but outside of it. He carried it with him back to the kitchen, where the metal of it gleamed nicely under the overhead light. The weight felt good in his hand. On a good week, Hux fired off four hundred rounds at the local range. He was practiced, efficient. Precise. Still, the need for a gun had always seemed distant. He’d never carried one in his car except to the range and back. Not that it’d have helped him today if he did have the .38 in the car with him. What would he have done? Brandished it at the friendly mechanic who stopped to change his tire?

The phone rang, and Hux jumped. He answered it with shaking hands.

“Finally! Where’ve you been? I’ve called a hundred times.”

It was Phasma. Hux fought the urge to just start bawling. He put some bass into his voice to try and keep the rasp out, grimacing at the pain it caused. “Sorry, Phas. Got home late.”

“Thought it was a morning thing? Anyway, I was thinking that if you aren’t busy tomorrow we could--”

“Okay, I’m sorry, I should have led with this. I got home late, had three drinks too many, _and_ I fell into the coffee table. I broke my nose.” Phasma’s exclamation hurt his head. Hux stretched the phone cord to open the fridge and look in it. Nothing was appetizing. He shut the fridge. A turtleneck could hide the bruises on his throat, but there was still his face. “Millicent got under my feet.”

“Oh my God! I’m coming over!”

“No, no. I’m fine. I’m going to bed.”

“What if you’re concussed? Is Millie alright?”

Hux laughed, and there was warmth in it again for the first time. “Jesus, Phas. I see how it is. I almost kill myself tripping over the cat and your sympathies are with her.”

“Hux, no--”

“I’m just kidding. Millicent’s fine. A bit disgruntled.” That was the truth, at least. “I’m just warning you in case I’m still colorful the next time you see me. I’m not up for tomorrow, but...let’s just say that if I had an ex-boyfriend you’d think he paid me a visit.”

“Nobody would dare put a hand on you,” Phasma said. “You’ve got a temper to match your hair.”

“That’s right,” said Hux.

“You sound hoarse.”

“I’m tired.”

“Well, if you need anything...takeout, a couple of old percocets….”

“I’ll call if I do. Piss off, it’s past my bedtime.”

Phasma did, after an ‘ _I love you, feel better’_ that made Hux’s eyes misty. He hung the phone up, his own cheery voice seeming to echo through the house. The lie he would live now.

His next stop was the shower. He brought the .38, setting it on the counter. New Hux used the mirror to examine his eyes. They were bloodshot, making the green seem brighter, almost paranormal. He leaned close, turned off the bathroom light, counted to twenty, and then turned it back on. His pupils contracted. They looked to be the same size as each other, too. So that was good. Probably no skull fracture. Maybe a concussion. He didn’t know enough to rule that out. He was a writer, not a doctor.

Hux needed a doctor, but if he went to his doctor, his misfortune really could become public property. Oh, doctors took an oath of silence. On the other hand, look what happened to the A-listers every time they went to rehab or had a psychiatric misadventure. Even if the doc and the nurses kept quiet about the horror writer who’d been fucked up the ass and choked within an inch of his life by the Bangor Ripper on his way home from a public appearance, what about the other patients that would see him there? To some of them he wouldn’t be just a skinny ginger twink with a broken nose. He’d be Bar Harbor’s resident nightmare peddler, you know they made a TV show about his latest one? And my God, you should’ve _seen_ him.

“I don’t have anything to be ashamed of,” Hux told his reflection. But public exposure would _make_ him ashamed. He’d be naked. A naked victim. _What about the other men in the pipe?_ Hux couldn’t think about them tonight. He showered, scrubbing himself raw under hot water, but he thought he could still feel Kylo in there somehow.

Hux hesitated outside his bedroom door. It was standing ajar, and for the life of him Hux could not remember whether he’d left it that way. It had occurred to him in the shower that if Kylo had his wallet, he had Hux’s home address. It was printed neatly on his driver’s license. The burglar alarm had not been set until Hux got home. Kylo could’ve parked his old F-150 around the corner and forced a lock open somewhere. _I checked the locks_. Kylo could be in that darkened room, waiting.

 _If he was there, I’d smell him. I’ll never forget the scent of his sweat. And I’d shoot him. No ‘put your hands up’. I’d just shoot him. RED WHITE & YOU, baby _.

Hux discovered that he _wanted_ Kylo in his room. That probably meant that New Hux was crazy, but so what? Shooting Kylo would make the public humiliation bearable. It would also probably help book sales.

It took his trembling hand ages to find the light switch. He kept expecting to feel Kylo’s big hand come down on his in the dark, gently. It would be gentle until it wasn’t. There was no one there, and Hux swallowed down his disappointment. He put on his gray silk pajamas and got into bed, leaving the .38 on the nightstand. He thought he’d never sleep, but then Millie jumped up and tucked herself into a warm ginger ball next to his hip and started purring, and he let oblivion take him.


	4. Chapter 4

It was six AM, and the sanity of morning’s light was streaming into the flat. Hux sat at his dining table, a round glass-top one that screamed either spinster or bachelor of a certain persuasion, with a mug of coffee in one hand and his second-favorite pen in the other, poised above a notebook. A cigarette hung from his lips, a Marlboro red. The smoke was acrid in his lungs. Bracing. He had showered again first thing, this time working shampoo through his hair until his scalp felt raw. It _had_ been agony to touch the spot on the back of his head that had slammed into Kylo’s truck, but there was beauty in that. He was alive and home to feel it.

The shower was a good place to think, just like the car was. In the shower he had faced up to his predicament: he _did_ need to see Doctor Unamo, even though he didn’t want to. Not for his face; he could wait a couple weeks until he was less battered, but he needed to get tested for STDs.

“Don’t forget the AIDS test,” he said aloud, and grimaced. He needed it for his own peace of mind. He printed ‘AIDS test’ evenly in the notebook and underlined it. But that wasn’t the morning’s central issue. What he did and didn’t do about his own assault was his business, but the other men in the pipe were not. Those men had lost more than he had, and the next man Kylo attacked probably would too. Especially if Kylo had discovered Hux’s absence from the culvert. He’d cut the next one’s throat. That there would be a next one, Hux didn’t doubt at all. Maybe not for some time. A month, a whole year. But there would be. Hux knew enough about murder to know that men like Kylo don’t stop until they are stopped. Hell, the next one might be Hux again. Kylo had his address. “And my cufflinks. Pervert bastard stole my cufflinks.”

 _Like you needed them anymore, as far as he was concerned_.

Even if Kylo never returned to First Order General or the culvert across the road, the other men in the pipe belonged to Hux now. In the way that Kylo belonged to Hux. They were all his responsibility. In the calm light of the Bar Harbor morning, the answer was simple: an anonymous call to the police. The fact that he hadn’t thought of it right away, especially as a veteran crime novelist, made Hux feel like he deserved a reprimand. He would give them the location, RED WHITE & YOU on Knight’s Cross, and he would describe Kylo. It couldn’t be hard to find a man like that once you knew who you were looking for. _Yes, officer. It was the giant with the huge nose and soft lips and kind eyes. I think he IS kind, at least in his own mind. He didn’t want to hurt me, he just had to, he even cried over it, and the hurting wouldn’t have hurt much after all if he’d finished me off. He drives a truck with planets painted on it and you’ll find a Star Wars VHS in his TV cabinet, I know because he wears the merchandise on his cock. Yes sir, the one he stuck in me. That one_. They’d find him pretty quick. Easy.

Too easy. Hux looked at the .38. He’d brought it to the table with him, and it lay between the notebook reading ‘AIDS test’ and the mug of coffee, the mug Phasma had gifted him after her trip to Georgetown: white with handpainted blueberry sprigs. What a tableau.

 _Too easy, because…._ “What’s in that for me?” Hux looked up at Millicent, seated on her perch by the window. “Just _what_ is in that for me, Millie?”

He’d gotten a message this morning, recorded while he was in the shower, and when he pressed play he expected it to be Ren doing the obligatory after-event follow-up. _Thank you for coming, undying gratitude, we had fun and hope you did too, the feedback was great, please come again. Not bloody likely._ But it wasn’t Ren’s voice that echoed out of the answering machine, it was a woman’s.

She identified herself as Rose Tico, and said she was calling from The Knight’s Inn. “Our policy is to courtesy-call everyone who leaves a car in our lot after closing. Thank you for not drinking and driving. The vehicle registered to you will be available for pickup until five PM this evening, after which it will be towed at your expense.” Rose paused, and when she spoke again the quality of practiced recitation had left her voice. “We have other property of yours, so please come to the office. I’ll need a picture ID. Thank you.”

Hux had played the message twice. Other property? His wallet? Showing up in a limo would be too conspicuous, so Hux called a Taxi. It was expensive, with an extra charge since the driver would come back empty. Hux ate for the first time since his ordeal. Toast with strawberry jam. He’d been unable to face anything in the fridge containing meat, and had tried to fry a couple of eggs but ended up retching into the sink and throwing them out. The smell was too thick. A thick smell, like rotting vegetation in a culvert where you didn’t rest alone.

Hux wore a turtleneck, just as he’d thought of before, but there was no hope for his face. His nose wasn’t crooked, thank God, because then he really would have to go and see his doctor to have it set. His sense of vanity wouldn’t have allowed him to let his nose heal bent. But he was developing some impressive bruising under his eyes and on the side of his face. Even huge sunglasses wouldn’t disguise it all, and Hux didn’t own a pair of those. He was no sunbather. At least the weather was right for the sweater, and his greatcoat on top.

When the cab turned into the dirt lot of The Knight’s Inn, Hux felt that his pulse must be going over a hundred beats a minute. The cabbie must have seen it on his face, or maybe had finally worked up the courage to ask about the obvious beating Hux had withstood.

“Everything okay, sir?”

“Exceptional,” Hux decided on. “I didn’t expect to come back here today. That’s all.”

“Few do.” The cab driver was bald. Fat and fifty. Hux didn’t ask him to stay -- he’d call another if he found that he couldn’t drive himself home. This cabbie reminded him too much of his father’s old friends, not a pleasant memory to have circling his skull as he approached the bar.

Kylo _had_ come here last night, to drop off Hux’s Audi once he fixed the tire. He had changed the tire, and he had done it for free. The lot was empty now except for three scattered car-islands, the Audi among them. It was at the back of the lot. Of course it was, Kylo wouldn’t want to be observed putting it there. Hux could see the plain blackwall tire on the front-left as he walked toward the door to The Knight’s Inn. Kylo had changed the tire, and then moved the car away from….

 _Away from his recreational facility. His artist’s studio. The Kill-Zone, make sure the title script is red and drippy. He choked me out, drove my car here, walked back to the store, and put me in the culvert. Then off he went. It’s a good thing I didn’t come to until he was carrying me. He would have been walking back while I was still circling the store and crying. He’d have found me in a daze and killed me again_ . Hux shook his head at that thought. Insane. He sounded insane. It _was_ insane. Suppose Kylo was waiting inside the bar? This could be a set-up. In a horrorbook, it would be. _Lured back by the giant’s girlfriend who’s just as crazy as he is_. Foolish. Paranoid.

Hux entered the bar. He reminded himself that the .38 was in his coat pocket, and that was comforting. “Hello?” His voice echoed.

“Right here,” a woman’s voice called. Rose Tico again.

There was an office door off to the right, partially open. It said STAFF ONLY. The lights inside it were brighter than elsewhere in the bar. They probably kept it closed at night. The sight of a filing cabinet would disrupt the honky-tonk ambiance. Hux made his way there.

Rose Tico’s perfect-oval face was surrounded by fanned-out black hair, and her eyes were piquant beneath her bangs. “Are you the Audi guy or the Honda guy?” she asked, shuffling papers, all business. There was a framed photo on her wall of another Asian woman, similarly-aged. Family, maybe. Rose wore a crescent-moon necklace on a delicate chain. It shone yellow under the pallid fluorescents. 

“Audi,” said Hux.

“ID?”

Hux handed it over. “I only have my passport. I lost my wallet. I was hoping you had it?”

Rose looked at him like he was dumb. “No, sorry. Maybe you stashed it under the seat? We only look in the glove boxes. Your keys were there.” She read the information in his passport then, and her eyes widened comically. “Holy shit! You’re the Kill Creek guy!”

Hux smiled, hoping it wasn’t a ghastly one. “Guilty.”

“I love your stuff. I’ve got every single one on my shelf at home,” Rose said, sounding almost disgruntled with herself for admitting it. Hux was probably ruining the mystique for her, standing in her office now and asking about his wallet.

“Well, with a few hundred more like you I could buy myself a mansion upstate.” Hux said. Sometimes it earned him an indulgent smile. Not from Rose.

“I hope that didn’t happen here.” She didn’t need to specify. Hux knew what she was talking about, and Rose knew that he knew.

For an instant Hux considered rehashing his story about tripping over his cat. It would make him look even more bumbling and dysfunctional, but that would be good. It was hollow and false and _boring_ , and Rose would be quicker to dismiss the memory of his visit. But he didn’t. Rose’s face told him that she was well-aware of the things that happened on certain Friday nights ( _Friday afternoons? What about those. Do you know about them, Rose?_ ) and she’d probably heard every variation of slip-in-the-shower tale that there was. She was the person making the courtesy calls and facilitating the pickups. Yes, he was sure she’d heard it all, and his outlandish tale wouldn’t fool her. More than that, Hux thought she was attractive. He didn’t want to tell her he broke his nose on his coffee table. He also didn’t want to tell her the truth.

“It didn’t happen here,” he said.

“Not even in the parking lot? If it was on the property I’ll need to talk to the security staff.”

“It was after I left.”

 _I really do have to report anonymously now, if I do report anything. I’m lying, and she’ll remember_.

“I’m sorry,” Rose said. She paused, wrestling with something. “I don’t mean to offend you, but you probably shouldn’t come back here. You don’t have any business in a place like this anyway. Our clientele is the kind with barbed wire tattoos on their biceps. It didn’t turn out well for you, did it?”

And there it was. Hux bristled. “I’ll keep it in mind. I was very foolish, bringing my face into an area it was bound to get bruised. Thank you.”

Rose’s face clouded with annoyance. “That’s not what I meant. It’s only...better safe than sorry, right? Did you know him?”

It was brazen. That was fine, Hux could return it. “My boyfriend and I had a bit of a tussle over at the Citgo,” he said, waiting for Rose’s face (if she was less guarded) or her eyes (if she was more) to betray her disgust. Not at the tussle. At the boyfriend.

“A bad boyfriend in the dumpster is worth two in the bush,” Rose said mildly. “I hope you broke up with him. A guy who does it once will--”

“Will do it again, yes. He’s out of the picture. If you don’t have my wallet, what other property of mine do you have?”

Rose Tico turned in her swivel chair, the sun highlighting her face, and opened one of her cabinets. She pulled out Hux’s GPS. Hux was delighted to see his old traveling buddy, and felt himself smile. It made his face ache, but that was okay.

“We’re not supposed to remove things from the patrons’ cars, but I didn’t like to leave this. It was sitting right there on your dashboard, and it looks expensive.”

“Thank you. That was very thoughtful.”

Rose smiled back at him, and it transformed her stern professionalism, lighting up her face as if another sunbeam had stolen across it. “You’re very welcome. When that bad boyfriend of yours comes crawling back asking for another chance, I hope you’ll think of me and all your other readers and tell him no. Just do it with the chain on the door.”

“That’s good advice.”

Rose asked, if Hux didn’t mind, would he sign an autograph for her? Hux told her of course he would, and watched with genuine amusement as she got a fresh page of branded stationary out and meticulously tore off the Inn logo with a ruler. “Make it ‘To Rose and Paige, true fans.’ Could you?”

Hux could. He added the date, and then had an idea. “A man helped me when my boyfriend was...you know. If not for him I could be a lot worse off.” _Yes! Much worse! Raped, even_. “I’d like to thank him, but I didn’t get his name. Kyle something.”

“Oh, I doubt I could be much help there. This place does a lot of business, and I don’t always pay attention.”

“He was memorable. And you’re local, right? My boyfriend and I walked down to the payphones together and we argued the whole way. I was trying to phone for a ride and he wanted to drive. I didn’t want him to. Anyway, it came to blows and this guy showed up and hauled my boyfriend off of me. He pulled up in a painted-up carnival attraction of a Ford with that plastic stuff for rust around the headlights.

“Bondo?”

“Yeah, I think so,” Hux said, knowing damn well so. “I remember thinking that when he got out of that funny truck, he hadn’t been driving it. He was wearing it.”

Rose grinned. “Oh my God, I might actually know who he is.”

“Really?”

“Was he big or really big?”

“Huge. And he was wearing a bright red cross,” _He’s certainly a frequent blood donor. He donates it to the First Order General and the Bangor Public Waterworks_. “And he had a baseball cap on, black with four silver lines on the brim.”

“He’s been wearing that damn thing for years! That’s Kylo Ren you’re talking about.”

The hum of the electric lights suddenly seemed very loud. Hux was careful to keep his face neutral. _Ren_.

Rose continued, “He’s local too, but I don’t know what part of town. I see him around all the time. Grocery, hardware store. Once you see him you don’t forget it. He and his dad own a garage. It also has Knight in the name, but it might not be the only one. That’s just a hazard of living around here. You’d think the whole town has a boner for the Medieval Times fair. I bet I could pick it out of the phone book, want me to look it up?”

“No, thank you. You’ve been very helpful. What you can do for me now, is if you see _Kylo Ren_ around, don’t tell him you saw me. I want to surprise him. He’s earned it.” Hux felt heat growing in his chest. A kernel of rage.

“No problem,” Rose smiled. “Just stay away from that ex-boyfriend, and away from the Inn. Don’t tell anybody I told you that. They’d fire me, and I’d have to kill you.”

“I’d deserve it,” Hux said blithely. He waved goodbye with the hand that held the GPS, a final thank-you.

  
  


“Hello Hux, I see we’re taking a trip.”

“Just home.” Hux said, then in the slightly different timbre he used for the GPS, “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” If he’d been at home, perhaps Millicent would’ve gotten that particular line of dialogue. She loved to question his decisions. “Not sure at all,” Hux said.

He started his car and looked up toward the Citgo down the lane, the stop he had intended to make on his way home. The one he wanted to make even less now that he’d spoken with Rose. The payphones were there, the upright one that was broken and the slanted one that worked. He could make his anonymous call from there. The Bangor Ripper would be caught, and there was at least a chance that his friends and associates and the world at large would not know that Armitage Hux had been held down on top of a heap of moldy carpet squares and raped, and that it had felt good. The police would prevent Kylo Ren from raping and murdering another man. But what about the older Ren? Would they find any evidence against him?

“What’s in it for me?” He asked himself. _I have a gun and I know how to use it_. He looked into his GPS’s screen, where Knight’s Cross was labeled clearly just off the 87. “I need to go home and think about this.”

 _What’s to think about? If I shoot him dead I’ll go to jail, raped or not. And I can’t prove I was raped_ . More than one thorough shower later, what evidence there was of sexual contact was diminished severely. He’d plainly been punched in the face and choked, but he was in tip-top shape south of his belt buckle. Thank God, of course, but also _fuck_.

Hux pulled onto the 87 and headed toward the interstate ramp. Just as he was pulling onto it, he thought, _I would have come home this way if someone else hadn’t had a better idea_. He said aloud, “Ren. Godfucking damn you, Ren.” Going to the police was out of the question until he had something else to offer them about the father, Hux told himself, knowing in his heart that he didn’t want to go to the police at all.

  
  


Hux did make one stop on the way home, to pick up every iteration of a newspaper he could find as well as an updated Bangor metropolitan area phone book. When he got home and spread them out over the table, he sat for a few minutes unable to read a word, wondering if he really intended on looking up Kylo Ren and his _father’s_ addresses and putting bullets in both their skulls. A revenge fantasy. He took in movies of that genre occasionally, but he’d yet to pen a story about the concept.

He looked at the advertisement most relevant to him first. The headline read: HEAD LIBRARIAN PRYCE REN ANNOUNCES “KILL CREEK FRIDAY.”

“There I am, the main attraction. Let’s see my host again,” Hux stared hard at the little photo of Ren on the side of the article, much smaller than the one of him. Ren and Kylo were both muscled and attractive men, but Hux couldn’t see much of a resemblance otherwise. Maybe Rose was mistaken about the last name, or maybe there was more than one retired mechanic named Ren. Hux shook his head to himself. Rage had invaded him, the deepest rage he’d ever known. He had to follow this thread to the end, because he could hear Ren very clearly in his head even now, leaning into his car window and looking him over with plain hunger in his piercing blue eyes and saying _You earned it_.

“What did I earn, Ren?” Hux muttered. Millicent, curled in his lap, made no answer. Could he really be sure that Ren had sent him to his psychotic son as some sort of sacrifice?

Right. Find the garage. Hux started leafing through the phone book The idea was wild, but strange things did happen. Landlords that poisoned their elderly tenants and buried them in the backyard to collect the social security for themselves. Parents that doused their children in gasoline and lit them up to avoid losing custody to the ex-spouse. If it were 1986 and not 85 the story of the disgruntled husband out west who froze his wife and ran her through the woodchipper might have come readily to mind. _There_ was a wild one. Book material, or movie. A father sending victims to his son was shocking, maybe even unlikely. But Hux didn’t think it was impossible.

He found a full page color advertisement for Knights of Ren Automotive. _That wasn't cheap_. Phone numbers and basic rates were printed beneath the company logo, a red cross turned on it’s side beneath the text, bright-red-tail-light-red, pointing between the words. Spearing them, like a sword. There was a photograph too, and Hux gripped the book tighter at the sight of it. It was Kylo, standing in front of a red Knights of Ren branded tow truck, a friendly smile on his face that showed his teeth. They were crooked but very white, and his canines were sharp. He’d been very friendly. Service with a smile. His voice and eyes had been rich and warm like a strong cup of tea when he’d backed Hux up against his truck and said, “Instead of changing your tire, I could fuck you. How about that?” The caption beneath the photo started, _Kylo Ren, Owner_.

“You’re going to pay, Kylo. Never mind the police. I’m the one coming to collect,” Hux told the photo.

And then there was Pryce Ren. Kylo’s proud papa, the man who had sent Hux on his merry way right into the trap with the boards. Ren had sent him by that road exactly, and the boards had been laid out ahead of time. Because Ren had told Kylo to be ready? Had called him up that morning and said, _I’m sending you one, don’t miss out_. Kylo was surrounded by his employees in the photo. Maybe it was meant to engender trust, seeing all their little smiling faces. Hux snorted at the idea. Ren stood at the edge of the crew. Hux frowned at he finished reading the caption…six Rens in total were gathered here, and not a shared feature among them.

 _Well, you figured out where I live. Let’s return the favor_. Hux might just have to pay Ren a visit. It wasn’t totally improbable that Ren was unaware of Kylo’s hobby. The Knights of Ren were located on Knight’s Cross, after all, down the opposite direction from the abandoned store. Ren probably drove up that way all the time to check on his old garage, and so it was reasonable he would suggest it to a fellow traveler. But then why wouldn’t he say ‘I take that route to visit my son.’ That would be natural in conversation. And how would Kylo have known that Hux was coming?

“He could pay attention to events at the library,” Hux told himself. “If he sees a guest he likes the look of, he knows his dad will send them that way...No. How would Kylo know I was going back to Bar Harbor?”

 _He could have read your profile just like Ren did_ , Millicent supplied.

“That is possible,” Hux allowed, petting Millicent’s head. “But I don’t believe it. Isn’t it simpler if they’re in cahoots?”

If Hux showed up on Ren’s doorstep and saw nothing in the man’s face but surprise and curiosity at the return of the last visiting author, that would be one thing. But if there was fear, or anger.... _You earned it_. Time to do some digging. Pryce Ren wasn't in the Bangor township white pages, which was not surprising, but three papers down in his stack Hux found a publicized snippet of the library's meeting minutes. They met at 75 Legend Lane. What was the chance...?

“Found you,” Hux murmured. “You need to plan this out,” He added in Millicent’s voice. “Including how far you’re willing to go.” Hux paused a moment and then said, “If I’m right, then quite far.”

He made a trip to the Massapequa Public Library -- _wonderful things aren't they, libraries? Just don't let the librarian give you directions_. The papers he was looking for now would be much older than anything he could pick up off a stand. And while he didn't intent on taking any more driving directions, the library staff were very helpful when it came to the stacks. It wasn't strange for a bestselling horror writer to come asking around about missing persons cases. He didn't even have to say it was for a book -- his assistant du jour had wanted an autograph. By the time the library was closing (he was given a very polite warning by the woman who had wanted his signature) Hux had more information than he'd truly hoped to find. He searched for each of the Knights of Ren, working backwards up the list of names on their garage's ad. Each time he found a similar story. They’d gone missing as children and turned up in new places as adults with new names. _Mechanics_ with new names. Some of them went home for a while once their old identity came to light, but they always returned to garage work. The stolen boys always came back to the crew known as the Knights. And Bangor's current serial killing spree was not the first. Sometimes there were years between bouts, but it always picked up again, and Hux was wholly unsurprised to find that the bodies tended to appear around Knight's Cross and Legend Lane. He checked up on Kylo last. Kylo Ren had been born Ben Solo, disappeared from sunny Sacramento when he was fourteen and found years later in Bangor, Maine with no desire to return to his folks. And you can’t make an adult go home if they don’t want to.

“He’s grooming them,” Hux told Millicent, the moment he returned home and slammed the door behind him, sagging against it. “Kylo _was_ a rookie. I think so anyway.” Millie padded away toward the kitchen and her bowl of dry food, thoroughly uninterested in this development. But Hux felt like he’d stuck his finger in an electric socket. He’d never been more awake.

Hux wasn’t injured beyond a (not insignificant, to be fair) beating to the face and throat. The other Bangor Ripper victims had been savaged, the ones that Hux was starting to think of as the true Bangor Ripper victims. They didn’t have to run their blue gums and confess to being raped for the examiners to note it; they’d been found with blood going brown or black down the lengths of their thighs. Kylo wasn’t the Ripper. Or at least not the only one.

What Hux wanted to do was to drive straight through the fallen cover of night to 75 Legend Lane with his gun in his coat. What he _should_ do was stop playing amateur detective and call the police. It was what the old Hux would have done, but Old Hux seemed like an estranged relative. New Hux made a deal with himself: if he woke up in the morning and still wanted to drive through the cold October wind and see Pryce Ren, he would, and depending on how things went there maybe he would visit Kylo Ren too. He thought that the night would finally push him back toward sanity and he’d make the call instead. Not anonymous either, he’d dance for the tabloids. Proving rape forty-plus hours and more showers than were strictly necessary after it had occurred would be impossible with no tissue wounds to show for it. Hux could hear the questions now -- was he sure it hadn't just been a lover's quarrel? Perhaps Hux had bent over for Kylo and then threatened to out him when a relationship wasn't forthcoming. Who could blame a red-blooded American man for getting hot under the collar about that? But Hux’s call would grease the axle, _Get it, Kylo?_ And eventually the truth would out. Right?

But in the morning, he looked at his .38 on the nightstand and thought. _I want to deal with this myself. I deserve to end it myself_.

“I don’t want to get caught,” he told Millicent, who stretched, poking out her little claws.

  
  


He pulled on a black sweater and cargo pants the next morning, adding his greatcoat and leather gloves, and his black flat-cap as an extra precaution. His hair still showed on the sides, but maybe Ren’s neighbors wouldn’t go gabbing about his redheaded visitor. He stowed the .38 in one coat pocket, his utility knife and extra ammo in his trousers, and a kitchen knife in his other coat pocket. It was a standard model, available in stores across the country. Untraceable. He needed to be careful with this much steel in his pockets, though. Don’t take a tumble today, Hux.

He spooned out double rations for Millicent and stood by, caressing her while she ate some of it. “Make it last,” he chided her. Phasma would check on Millie if Hux didn’t answer his phone for a whole day. Two at most. The most important thing to remember was that things would not go according to his plan. Ren might not even be home, or he could be entertaining. Maybe Hux would arrive and find all of the Knights clustered there together; a sobering thought. If Hux couldn’t improvise today, he really would be leaving his Bar Harbor home for the last time.

Just before he left, he set the burglar alarm. Thick clouds were rolling overhead, and the wind flapped his coat up. Hux thought it was a _fine_ night for a horror story.

“I’ve lost my mind,” he said when he got into his Audi and started the engine. Orange leaves scuttled across the windshield. “It fell out and died in that culvert.” He programmed 75 Legend Lane into the GPS, and backed out of his drive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you've read this far, you've made it to the point of bad decisions. Hux, come on. The fanciful mind of an author, huh? Stay tuned for the reappearance of Ren.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [80s playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4b8KYc9sCu0YJbDMBKBNYJ?si=a19L7VBSShWY0wpUMdAA2Q)

Ren’s front door had beveled glass strips on either side of it, so after Hux knocked he held up his notebook, pretending to write in it with one gloved hand. He’d brought it for exactly this reason; so that anyone looking would think he was only a man taking some sort of survey. Here to find out what brand of cigarette Pryce Ren preferred, or to ask if his refrigerator was running. He listened to the sound of the TV beyond the door and the approaching thud of heavy footsteps. He half-turned so that even the distorted glass of the bevel-strips would only catch the side of his face. He read, ‘AIDS test’ over and over.

Pryce Ren opened his door. “Can I help y—”

Hux turned toward him. The shock he saw on Ren’s face, the jaw-drop of incredulous shock, told him everything he needed to know. He pulled the .38 from his pocket. “Move back from the door. If you try to shut it, I’ll shoot you.”

“You won’t,” said Ren. He didn’t move back, but he didn’t try to shut the door either.

“Get inside.” Hux saw Ren’s chest begin to rise, and added. “Yell and I’ll shoot. You better believe me. I am not even _close_ to kidding.”

Ren’s chest fell again. His blue eyes flicked beyond Hux, looking for a way out. He didn’t look like a librarian. He didn’t look like a mechanic, either. “If you fire that gun the whole neighborhood will hear it,” he warned.

“What do you care? You’ll be dead. Get. _Inside_ .” To Hux’s own ears he did not sound like an author. _So that makes both of us_. Ren backed up, and Hux walked into his house, keeping the gun trained on him. He kicked the door shut behind him. There was a little side table with trinkets on it, and Hux said. “No grabbing.”

Ren’s mouth twitched. Grabbing something and hurling it at Hux had indeed been on his mind. “I have no idea why you’re here, but—”

“Don’t bullshit me, Daddy. You thought I was dead. It was all over your face.” It was good to know that Kylo hadn’t gone back to the culvert. If Hux was right about the type of relationship Kylo and Ren had, Kylo wouldn’t keep a secret from him. There was a framed photograph on the wall of Ren with all his boys. He had an arm thrown around Kylo in the picture.

“You’re crazy,” Ren spat.

“How long have you been doing it? A long time before the Bangor Ripper, right? You and your little club, changing oil in the day and killing in the night. Do you always pimp for them, or just to get them started?”

“I have no idea what you mean. You come to the library, give a lackluster presentation, and now you show up at my _house_ —”

“I checked into your Knights of Ren. Not yours, anymore. _His._ A real bunch of Lost Boys. Kylo Ren raped me and tried to kill me, and you sent me to him. When did you find him? He was fourteen or fifteen, right?”

Ren was bouncing on his feet, gearing up for fight or flight. It would probably be fight. Hux noticed the trinkets on the side table again. It was an unusual assortment of stuff; rabbit’s foot keychain, a necklace, a bowling membership card from Wisconsin made out to one Mr. Poe Dameron, and—

Glittering in the light, Hux’s diamond cufflinks. Tokens. Offerings to Daddy Ren.

Ren saw Hux’s distraction and charged him. Hux’s back slammed into the closed door behind him, rattling it in its hinges. He dropped the gun, and they both went for it. Ren drove his shoulder into Hux’s chest like an American football player intent on tackling. Hux shoved his hand into his other coat pocket and wrapped his hand around the handle of the kitchen knife that was his backup. It was the biggest one, the one that looked like an elongated shark’s fin. _Cook’s Knife? Doesn’t matter. Focus_.

Ren was getting off him, the gun in his grasp, pointed at Hux. Hux stood, pushing himself up against the door. Ren’s face was feral, his eyes bright. This could be the man that savaged the 23 year old in the canal. Oh yes, this could be him. “You’re a shitty writer,” Ren spat. He kept talking, picking up speed. Getting the words out fast so they could move on. “And you were a shitty guest speaker. You phoned in your talk just like your books, just like your life. Skinny and petulant. So full of yourself. You were _perfect_ for him. He needed to do someone. Let ‘em go too long and they start thinking about talking, the ones that don’t take to it as naturally. I sent you that way and it worked out right. I’m glad he fucked you. He should’ve killed you. He’ll need to be punished for that. I don’t know what you thought you were doing coming out here, but I’ll show you what you get.”

Ren pulled the trigger and there was a dry click. Hux never loaded the first chamber, in case the trigger was pulled by accident. The surprise on Ren’s face was comical. It made him look younger. He took his eyes off Hux to look at the gun, and Hux jammed his knife into Ren’s belly up to the hilt.

Ren made a sound that tried to be a scream and failed. He dropped Hux’s .38 and it clattered to the hardwood floor. He stumbled back, curling in on himself, and looked up at Hux, unbelieving. Dark blood was seeping through his shirt now and dripping out from beneath the hem, spattering onto his bare feet and the floor. Hux saw that his feet were burnt, too.

Hux had understood his whole life that killing was just part of the whole ordeal, and that there were different levels. No one mourned a swatted mosquito. Hux had eaten his fair share of burgers, too, since he set down roots on this side of the Atlantic, and had never felt remorse or regret. He felt neither in Ren’s front hallway. Perhaps only because it had been self defense, but then again, that excuse would not follow him through the rest of the night.

“Ren,” Hux said. “I confess I’m feeling a certain kinship with you at this moment. Now, you can roll around all you want with that knife in your gut….”

As if obeying a command, Ren was slipping sideways. He hit the wall and slid down, groaning out a low and raw “ _Oohhh_.”

“Or I can make it stop. But you need to tell me how far this goes. Are your boys innocent?”

Ren groaned again. “You’re making...mistake...hospital,” he panted.

“The mistake was yours. If you think that’s how this works, you’re stupid,” Hux told him calmly. “ _Your boys_ , Ren. How many of them am I butchering tonight?” He snapped his fingers twice to hurry the old man along.

Ren only looked up at him, breathing raggedly and seething. Hux went to the kitchen and fetched an oven mit. He put the .38 inside and the glove against Pryce Ren’s temple, and then pulled the trigger. There was a muted sound like someone clearing their throat in one hearty go, and Ren’s brains were added to his home decor.

Hux took his cufflinks. Let the police find the rest of the artifacts when Ren’s neighbors reported him missing or noticed a smell. Let them find the bowling membership from Wisconsin. Hux had no doubt that it was unreturnable to Mr. Dameron without a shovel.

There was still the issue of his suit jacket -- with his name sewn into the collar -- and his wallet. If those were here, Hux needed to find them. He couldn’t leave anything that would tie him to this. Ren’s office was upstairs, and Hux checked there first. He needed addresses, too. He hadn’t bothered to try and find the rest of the Knights’ homes, guessing they'd opt out of a public listing. Following Ren's lead. He had sort of hoped that Ren would profess the rest of the crew innocent, say he tortured them into it, that Kylo had only done what he’d done to avoid the same fate. It wouldn’t have been the truth, not the whole truth, but Hux would have accepted it and gone home. Or so he told himself.

The office was lined with photographs of all the authors who had come to speak at the Bangor Public Library since Ren took up his position there. Some of them were autographed. Hux looked at his own face, the updated headshot he’d taken two years ago. It was stern-looking, like a military photo. Ren hadn’t asked him to autograph it. _Why would he want a shitty writer’s autograph? I was just meat for his adopted son’s meat grinder, keeping the gears greased with blood. How lucky for Ren that I agreed to fill the hole in his schedule_.

Ren’s desk drawers were unlocked, at least. A serial killer might have had reason enough to padlock his papers up, right? Hux's desk locked, and Hux didn’t have those sorts of things to hide. Or hadn’t before. He found Ren's address book in the top-right drawer below a receipt for boat line. It looked like two of the crew bunked at the garage at 82 Knight’s Cross. Two lived at number 23 on the same road, and Kylo alone at number 101. Easy. Hux would just mosey on down the boulevard, starting with Mister and Mister 23.

He checked the closet in the office and found nothing of note, and headed to Ren’s bedroom next. The closet there also turned up nothing. Just when he was starting to tell himself that there was no reason for any of the Knights to keep his suit jacket because it wouldn’t fit any of them (but they kept the cufflinks and not to wear, oh no, just to look at), he thought to check under Ren’s mattress.

“Got you.” The suit jacket wasn’t the only item of clothing there, but it was the only one he took. No sign of his wallet yet, but Hux didn’t truly expect to find it until he made his final cold call. On his way out the door Hux’s gave Ren’s body a passing glance. He could see his own face reflected in the hall mirror, his expression pitiless. There was only the look of a man who has completed an unpleasant errand and has more work ahead of him. Hux thought, _First Order General, RED WHITE & YOU _.

He returned to his Audi, parked around the corner, and tossed his suit jacket in the backseat. The GPS only thought about number 23 Knight’s Cross for a moment, and then the route was ready.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Kylux Spotify Playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6YRMYaT5fte0cPWH5UVGW5?si=J3LTK6tkRyqlKb_taM7eHg)
> 
> [80s playlist I listen to while writing this lol](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4b8KYc9sCu0YJbDMBKBNYJ?si=a19L7VBSShWY0wpUMdAA2Q)


	6. Chapter 6

Hux found his destination not long after nine o’clock. The moon was still low in the sky and the wind was tossing the trees’ branches and rustling their leaves like a muted orange sea.

On the way there, he passed by the old roadhouse and the Citgo. His path took him in a reverse of his day from hell, coming around to Knight’s Cross from the side that he’d left it. Parked at the Citgo was a Ford F-150 with a custom paint job, planets and a Star Destroyer. Because that’s what the UFO was, wasn’t it? Bondo around the headlights. The cab was empty. Kylo must be inside the Citgo, maybe picking out one of the various snacks that Hux had wanted so badly on October 12th. Hux didn’t pull in at the gas station. There might be lots of Audis on the road, but Kylo would be sensitized to them now. He might have memorized Hux’s plate, too. Hux didn’t need to stop and follow him home. He’d be meeting up with Kylo later.

_Hope you’re getting a pack of beer, for your sake and mine_ , Hux thought, and continued on his way. The road wound away from civilization. Two miles in, First Order General and the hidden culvert with its secrets. Hux kept going. The numbers got smaller. He knew he passed Kylo’s residence, but it was back inside the trees and he couldn’t see it.

The Knights of Ren Automotive garage was a long, squat building trimmed in white and red. There were fuel pumps out front, and one of the garage doors was open, displaying the car being worked on within it to the outside world. It was propped up and a man lay below it, his hands reaching up into the undercarriage and a beer bottle off to the side. Everything was lit within and without with white high-intensity arc lights, including most of the parking lot. If it were downtown, everything that occurred on site would be plain for passerby to see even in the dark of night. But the only thing across the street from the garage on Knight’s Cross, at the very edge of Bangor, was dark woods. Hux moved on. He’d be back.

“Hux, you are approaching your destination,” said the GPS.

The car breasted a rise, on the right was a mailbox marked REN and 23. Hux turned in without hesitation and cut his lights just in case. The driveway was long and winding, rising on a slight incline, and smooth as black ice. Well-maintained asphalt. The house was small but tidy. There was no porch, only a stoop. Parked on the left side of the house was a long black trailer-box branded KNIGHTS OF REN AUTOMOTIVE on the side. Hux slowed as he approached, and then he was flooded with a white glare that blinded him. It was a huge motion-activated pole light, and if there was anyone in that house, they knew he was here now. Hux jammed on his brakes, feeling as if he were in the middle of one of those nightmares where you go on stage without clothes.

He tried to think, but the blaring light made it hard. Shadows seemed alive. They were reaching for him. Of course men like the Knights of Ren would be the sort to have pole lights in their yards. Hux felt stupid for not considering it. _I’ll bet deer trip it all the time. They may not even look out, but they might, so MOVE_. Hux drove in behind the trailer-box. The ground was bumpy, but bald. He would not leave tracks in grass here. He drove the Audi deep into the box’s shadow and then killed the engine. He got out, and the pole light went out when he shut his door. For an instant he thought he’d done it.

Hux went around the back of the house, terrified of tripping another light but without a choice. There was no second pole light, but the moon went behind a cloud and Hux tripped over a metal cellar bulkhead with a terribly loud bang. He went to his knees, hissing, and wondered what he’d become. He was a member of the Maine Authors’ Guild, and not two hours ago he’d shot a man in the head after stabbing him in the stomach. He was planning to shoot more. Not stab more, if he could help it. The utility knife was Plan Z. If it came to that, he was in trouble.

Hux went around to the back door. It was a sliding glass door, easy enough to wrench open even for someone as thin as him. Even if it was locked. It wasn’t. He slid it open, wincing at the rubbery noise it made in its track, and entered. The inside of the house was not tidy. There were stains on the floor, spills of yesteryear never wiped clean. The counters were piled high with what looked like five years’ worth of adverts and newspapers. The kitchen trash overflowed -- four plastic garbage cans piled high -- and there were boxes stacked in the corner. It smelled like spoiled food. Hux considered getting another oven mitt -- there were two Knights here, if he was lucky, and in separate rooms, if he was lucky -- but, no. Two men living like this perhaps did not own one, and the isolation of this place would consume the shots. If he was quick enough, one gunshot wouldn’t be enough warning for his second victim to get away or mount a counterattack.

He could hear the TV, just like at Ren’s. He didn’t think they were watching the same program. Ren’s selection had sounded like a reality show. These two Knights were watching Scarface. Hux entered their living room behind them. He expected the floor to creak. It didn’t. This room, too, was stuffed with junk. There was even a boat motor in the corner. The carpet looked like a biohazard. _All I have in this world is my balls and my word_ , Hux thought, and aimed the .38.

His first shot opened a hole above the left brow of the Knight closest to him, spraying the television in front of him with red. The second Knight turned, his mouth open in a big O of surprise, his eyes bulging. The second shot caught him in the throat, just below the chin. He choked, gurgled, and slid heavily to the floor to die. The full ashtray on the TV stand wobbled. The first man had a lined face. The second was younger, his face pitted with acne scars.

_So young. I’ve lost my mind._ What proof did Hux have that these men were killers? Not half as much proof as he had that _he_ was. Hux almost grabbed the arm of the man closest to him to ask him to fess up, but there was no one here who could do that anymore except for himself. Hux heard himself make the saddest chuckle that had ever issued forth from a human throat. The younger Knight was wearing a black cap, but without silver stripes on the brim like Kylo’s. Suppose that neither of these men had ever so much as looked at someone the wrong way? Suppose they didn’t know?

“No,” Hux told them. “You knew. At the very least you knew and you should have told. You should have _told!_ ”

They made no answer. It was 9:30.

  
  


Hux pulled the Audi in next to one of the pumps at the Knights of Ren Automotive garage and parked, cutting the engine. The garage door was still open, light spilling out, and a man was still underneath it. Perhaps not the same man. It was hard to tell.

Someone knocked on the passenger-side window, and Hux jumped. The man laughed good-naturedly. Hux got out and shut the door. The biggest sound in this whole place was the night wind, but there was also the faint sound of a radio going in the garage. Some good old rock-n-roll, turned down low enough that it was stripped of its raw power.

“Heya,” said the Knight. He was blond with brown eyes. They weren’t as warm as Kylo’s. “Need a fill up?”

“Please,” Hux said, holding his gloved hands out. _Have at_. He smiled, and knew it was too cold by the way the Knight’s eyes flicked around, checking their surroundings on instinct. “I don’t suppose you have a washroom?”

“Oh. Yeah, inside,” the man jerked his head toward the open garage.

Hux entered the garage, stepping lightly around the car where the other Knight still worked. Better off this one first. When the other one heard it, he’d have nothing outside to arm himself with. _He might already have a gun in those deep jumpsuit pockets. Deep enough for a pistol AND a pair of satin undershorts. You don’t know. Quite right,_ Hux admitted. But there was always going to be an element of chance. Vengeance: some guesswork required. Hux steeled himself: he’d get one shot at this. He put his whole body into it and kicked one of the jacks out from under the car. The vehicle heaved and fell with a crash, and agonized shrieks issued from beneath it.

The other Knight’s footfalls echoed on the pavement outside as he came running. Hux aimed at the door, holding the .38 out. The blond man appeared, Hux shot, and the shot missed. He’d started to duck earlier than Hux anticipated to try and get to his trapped friend. The bullet buried itself in the wall.

“ _Fuck_ ,” the Knight grunted. There was the sound of scrambling and metal hitting metal on the other side of the car. A large wrench was launched over the top of it and Hux stepped aside easily.

“This can all be over,” Hux called, beginning to walk around the car. He had to raise his voice to be heard over continued squealing. He couldn’t wait to silence that voice.

“Stay away,” the man answered, sounding a great deal more shocked and terrified than Hux had anticipated.

“Not so tough when someone comes after _you_ ,” Hux said. The Knight tried to make a dash for the office and this time Hux hit his mark. The man crashed to the floor, the contents of his skull bubbling out into a widening pool. Hux finished his walk around the car, looked down into the screaming face of the pinned Knight, and ended his suffering.

Hux took a deep breath in the restored silence. Well, near silence. There was the wind, and there was Little Richard on the radio. Only one Knight of Ren remained now, and with any luck he hadn’t yet noticed the silence of his brothers.

_He might have been picking up something at the Citgo for a trip_ , Hux’s brain said. _Maybe he’s not home_.

“He’s home,” Hux growled. In the garage, it echoed.

  
  


The driveway at 101 Knight’s Cross wasn’t as long and winding as 23 had been. It wasn’t paved, and there wasn’t a mailbox out front. Hux brought his GPS with him into the red truck he’d nicked from the garage, otherwise he might have missed the turn.

The manse at the end of the drive looked straight out of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Hux wondered how Kylo had managed to transplant it to Bangor, Maine. _There’s the porch I’ve been missing. Was First Order General homey to you, Kylo?_ The cruder the art, the closer life imitated it. Hux made no attempt at stealth, coming up the drive with the high beams on. Why hide? Kylo would know the sound of his brother’s truck just as well as his own. Hux parked by the back door and killed the engine. He carried the .38 in his hand. If the pattern held...yes, the back door was unlocked. Its hinges were well-oiled and the door opened without a squeal. Kylo Ren was a handyman. In a reverse of Misters 23, the aging outside of this house concealed its tidy interior. It was nearly stark, very few personal effects. The air was fresh, at least. The countertops were clean. There were a few scattered posters on the walls, including one of the Death Star. _Good taste_ , thought Hux. _Always thought that was cool_.

“The hell are you doing here?” Kylo called from down a hallway. He, too, had a radio going on low volume. The Knights of Ren were music fans, it seemed. Hux held down a hysterical giggle when he realized it was _Total Eclipse of the Heart_. “I’m out of beer, if that’s what you came for.” The sound of Kylo’s rich baritone voice made Hux’s skin prickle up in gooseflesh. He turned and walked down the hallway. “If you called I could’ve saved you--”

Hux stood in the doorway to what he saw was Kylo’s bedroom. Kylo saw him. Hux had spent time considering what Ren’s reaction to seeing him alive might be, but in truth he had not considered Kylo’s before this moment. Kylo sat on his bed, made neatly army-style, a book in his lap, only clad in a pair of boxers (plain black this time). No jumpsuit, no cap. His hair was wavier than Hux remembered, but the rest was the same. Big man. Huge man, huge features. His eyes looked even bigger now, because they had gone wide and glassy. Seeing a ghost. Kylo’s lips went soft, his mouth just slightly open. It was not the same sort of surprise that had been on Ren’s face. Kylo’s face held unadulterated wonder.

“You’re dead,” Kylo whispered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Main event next time!


	7. Chapter 7

_You’re dead. You’re dead, you’re dead, you’re dead_ . Hux’s brain replayed Kylo’s words, trying them on for size. _Am I?_ Old Hux was.

Hux thought that he could cross the room and put the .38 to Kylo’s forehead and pull the trigger, and Kylo would not do anything to prevent it. His head would snap back and his big brown eyes would go even more vacant, and that would be the end. It should have been a relief; a sorely needed break at the end of hard toil. It made Hux angry.

“No,” said Hux. “Not me. You must be thinking of your murdering little friends. All of them.”

Kylo’s eyes bored into Hux. “Ren?”

“Yes.”

“You’re not dead,” said Kylo, his voice dipping even lower, low enough to prompt a shiver down Hux’s spine. He sounded as though he were trying to adjust to it. To the intrusion of it. The dreamy look was still on his face. Hux saw that his wallet was on Kylo’s nightstand, flipped open. His driver’s license was visible in its clear plastic pocket. Horrid photo, but who takes an attractive picture at the DMV?

Hux lifted the .38, aiming at Kylo’s wonderstruck face. Kylo’s expression shifted again, but not to anger. It looked very much like gratitude. Hux lowered the gun. He grasped at the words to begin to ask Kylo what he wanted to know. _You said you were sorry. How sorry?_ But there was no answer that would be satisfactory, and Hux knew it. Kylo hadn’t been sorry enough not to stow him away in a cold pipe to rot with the others, turning skeletal before he was ever uncovered. _If_ he was ever uncovered. Maybe Kylo had been scared of Ren, but that didn’t make much of a difference to Old Hux down there in that culvert.

Hux scowled down at him and asked instead, “Have you been doing weird shit to my underwear?”

This, at last, got a rise out of Kylo. “No,” he barked, defensive. His brows drew down over his eyes.

“Yeah? Where are they?” Kylo shifted uncomfortably and Hux scoffed. “Give me my wallet back.”

Kylo bit his plush lower lip, plainly considering asking the man with the gun for leniency. Spoiled brat. “Can I keep--”

“ _No_ ,” Hux said, and now he was shouting. “You cannot keep my license. You raped me--”

Kylo shouted right back, “I _know!_ ”

“--you choked me, and you left me for dead.”

“I _am_ sorry. I said I was!”

Hux’s head hurt. This was not a normal conversation. He was going to shoot this asshole and then go home. It didn’t matter how fucked up Kylo’s childhood was, or how many times the mirrored carnival maze that was his psyche twisted around. That was not Hux’s problem. “You insufferable little prick.”

“We both know it’s not little.”

Hux raised the gun, feeling his face heat in rage. This time, Kylo stood, laying his book aside. _The Stranger_ , well-thumbed. Hux could see his name on the cover, partially obscured by the reflection of the overhead lights. _Did you pick that up before or after you killed me?_ Kylo walked slowly forward until the muzzle of the .38 was poking him right in his very defined left pectoral, over his heart. One big hand closed around Hux’s wrist, the fingers wrapped all the way around his skinny arm. Kylo edged the fabric of his coat up and pressed two fingertips just above the hem of his leather glove, feeling for a pulse. Kylo was superstitious. Like a child, like an overgrown and fearful child that needed convincing that a walking corpse had not just entered his room to menace him with a newly-reloaded Smith & Wesson. Hux resisted the desire to snap at him again, settling for a glare.

Kylo squeezed his wrist and twisted, and Hux felt as though his hand were pried open by an invisible force. He dropped the gun. Kylo caught it and tossed it casually aside onto his bed. _Bloody hell Hux, fool you once…._ But Hux couldn’t dwell on losing hold of his weapon twice in one night. Kylo forced him back into the hall, pushing him into the wall and then up it, hoisting him up and holding him there as easy as a feather. Hux grunted when the tender back of his skull struck drywall. His head was forced to the side and his first thought was that Kylo intended to snap his vertebrae. Then he felt the mouth hot on his neck, tongue laving over his bruised skin. It hurt. It felt good. His hat tumbled to the floor. Kylo pressed up against him like a desperate lover whose main squeeze just walked through the door after a long period of absence. No, after an ugly breakup, one he’d thought would be final. But here Hux was, crawling back.

This was exactly the situation he had meant to avoid. Facing any one of the Knights without a firearm was suicide, and Kylo was the biggest of them. Hux should have shot him where he sat, no time for chit-chat, just like the first two. He should have. He hadn’t because….

 _Because Ren groomed him_ . That wasn’t quite right. Kylo was in no different position than any of the other men Hux had slaughtered tonight, their bodies still cooling now. _Because Ren told me. He said he had to send me to be beaten and fucked and strangled and robbed not for cash but for proof, proof brought back to Ren and displayed in his entryway for all the Knights to see every time they visit. He had to put me in Kylo’s path to get eaten up like an irresistible treat or Kylo might talk, because Kylo doesn’t take to it well_. But being mediocre at rape and murder, as a personal failing, wasn’t exactly comparable to phoning it in on the next paperback thriller that would grace the shelves of airport bookstores that Hux would not frequent, preferring to drive.

Hux would kill Kylo if he had to do it by choking the man with his own bedsheets. He was going to finish this, and take back his wallet simply because Kylo shouldn’t have it, and then write out a confession in his notebook to leave in Kylo’s lap. He’d write it right below ‘AIDS test’, because that was sort of funny. New Hux thought it was, anyway. Let the tabloids print that one.

_To the proper authorities,_

_I make no excuses for what I have done, nor can I say I was of unsound mind. I suppose that my father may inherit my estate, depending on the legal ramifications of my crimes, and if so I want it conveyed to him that a large portion of my funds are to be donated to organizations in Maine supporting victims of sexual assault. Not less than 1.5 million. More, if he cares to pretend any level of grief for me. I also wish a sum of at least 150,000 donated to the Bangor Public Library to atone for the loss of their head librarian. His skills in event programming were only surpassed by his talent for murder and coercion. For Ren’s demise I make no apology. I am sorry about his boys, if only because I am sorry their blood has stained me now. I don’t think any of them were innocent, but they were not the man that raped me. I’m sorry about Kylo, too, even though he is the one whodunit. I can’t explain that. You’ll find me at First Order General just down the road. This business started there, so it’s only fitting it will end there. I’m going to sit on the porch and listen to the wind and the ticking of the broken neon sign and think my final thoughts, and then I’m putting my gun in my mouth and pulling the trigger. You’ll find two others in the culvert across the road. I don’t know for sure who put them there, only that it wasn’t me. My beloved cat will go to Delphine Phasma of Bar Harbor. It’s sanctimonious, but I do think the men who called themselves the Knights of Ren are better off dead. Of course, so am I._

_Yours, Armitage B. Hux_

His final autograph. Maybe his favorite pen was in one of Kylo’s kitchen drawers. Of course, he had to get out of Kylo’s grasp first. Kylo was sucking just below his jaw now, mercifully above the prior bruising. Hux was totally unsurprised to hear that the radio in Kylo’s room had transitioned to _Careless Whisper_ . Why not? Just why the hell not? And if either of them survived the next four minutes and sixty seconds, _Eat Me Alive_ would greet the victor’s ears. It seemed as natural as the fact that the sun would rise in the morning to illuminate seven fresh corpses in and around Bangor, Maine.

The radio crooned. Kylo moaned low against Hux’s jaw, grinding his hips into Hux, and that didn’t hurt. Of course it didn’t. Under normal circumstances, Hux would have enjoyed himself very much in his current position. He was known to appreciate a strong frame. These were not normal circumstances. Hux bit him, sinking his teeth into the meat of Kylo’s left shoulder until blood flooded his mouth.

Kylo backed away, shouting, and that was only natural too. Hux wanted to get his .38 back in his hands, but it would be unwise to try and slip by Kylo now, even while the man was distracted by pain. Hux should give him the ol’ run around. He took off back down the hallway. Kylo was hot on his heels.

He knew the kitchen was too narrow. He could run straight out the back door, of course, but that would only take him further from his gun. So: into the darkened room off the kitchen. With any luck, the old and rambling manse would have somewhere with enough space to...to do something, to hurt Kylo again and get by him without being grabbed because to be grabbed again now was to be killed.

Hux entered the living room, lit only by the light pooling in from the kitchen and the moonlight streaming in from the windows that looked out on the porch. And how sane that was, the existence of living rooms and windows and porches. But Hux didn’t want to stay and lean on the railing and chat. He wanted to pay for his goods and get out.

He turned and kicked the coffee table across the hardwood floor just after he ran past it, putting his body into the motion just like with the carjack. Kylo toppled over it with a curse. He’d have some healthy bruises on his shins if he lived long enough for them to form. Hux drew his utility knife from his pants (hello Plan Z) and skirted the heap on the floor that was Kylo. He wouldn’t be down long. He was already getting back up, and now he’d be even angrier.

It was suicide to move slowly, but Hux did. He backed toward the hallway, watching Kylo rise to his feet again and shake out his joints. Hux wanted to see him angry, he realized. To see the killer with the perfect plan out of his element in his own home. Hux was not disappointed. Kylo, as it turned out, was very good at getting angry.

Kylo’s face twisted and he bared those crooked white teeth. His eyes glittered black in the dark of the room, smoldering with fury. He charged, yelling. Another hidden talent — it was deafening. Hux slashed at him with the knife as he moved into range. He felt the blade connect and dragged it down, splitting Kylo open from brow to chest. He felt it drag gratingly over Kylo’s collar bone, and used the last of his strength to push it past that, down across his chest almost to one dusky nipple. Kylo was bleeding terribly, his right eye rendered useless by it. Kylo pulled at his arm again, trying to slacken his grip and dislodge the knife before it could be driven in deeper, the other hand blindly reaching out to ensnare Hux’s throat.

 _Not happening, friend_.

Hux let go. Leaving this unfinished was not an option, and the idea that he could hack a furious giant like Kylo to pieces without being torn apart himself was laughable. He needed his gun, which meant going back into the bedroom down the narrow hall. Kylo would follow him, and Hux would shoot or die in that trap of a room. Simple. The dash down the hallway was straightforward, Kylo on his heels again, hardly slowed by having his face bisected, or by smacking into the wall when his own momentum coming around the corner made his huge body slide. Hux made it into the bedroom and fell onto the bed, snapping up his gun and bringing it around to aim. The first chamber wasn’t empty this time.

“ _Wait_ ,” Kylo snarled. Then softer, “wait.”

Kylo was on him but not twisting the gun away again, not pinning him down on his bed. Those big hands were on Hux’s thighs, squeezing them. Kylo went to his knees and rubbed the uninjured side of his face up the inside seam of Hux’s trousers, nuzzling Hux and looking up at him with those golden-brown eyes. A loyal hound.

 _Kill the king, take the throne_ , Hux thought. He stopped Kylo’s movements by putting the pistol to his forehead, just above his new wound. It would be a nasty scar. _No, it won’t. That cut will never seal up into a purple line, because I’m killing him._ Another thought-voice appeared then, not Old Hux or New Hux but something even darker than either of them, something ancient that had followed Hux home from the icy grave of the culvert. No, not followed. It had awakened there, already inside him before he felt the first pains of it, like a tumor.

 _You’re going to let him live and you know it. He’s too interesting to kill_.

“Instead of pulling that trigger, you could fuck me.” Kylo grinned. One of his hands slid up to squeeze at Hux’s erection, an obvious strain in the fabric of his pants, alerting Hux to the state of himself.

“Oh, _hell_ ,” Hux muttered. He did not unhand the gun. He’d keep it, thank you. But he did turn it away enough to grab Kylo and pull him up by his hair for a proper kiss. It tasted of iron. Kylo’s lips had been soft against his before, even as he hadn’t dared move, and they seemed softer now. He remembered the exact timbre of Kylo’s voice when he’d said-- “Sorry I was rough,” Hux murmured into Kylo’s mouth between hungry kisses.

“You’re still really pretty,” Kylo said. It was strange to be fawned over as his clothes were pulled off -- the superior frame, in Hux's mind, was the one that soon lay beneath him. Even if it was bleeding profusely. The blood welled up faster with exercise, turning Kylo's sheets maroon at an alarming rate, but Kylo kissed him into silence when Hux tried to suggest a break to see to the cut. Kylo touched Hux as if memorizing the feel of him, mapping out his chest and shoulders especially. There was burning intensity in Kylo's movements. He seemed afraid that this time would be fleeting just like the first. Hux couldn't guess one way or the other. The future was shadowed, muddled in his brain like looking through a fogged window. Hux would never forget the shade of Kylo’s eyes or the line of his nose, or the shape of his mouth. He kept looking anyway, perfecting the image of Kylo's face he held in his mind.

“Will I see you again?” Kylo asked, leaning against the porch railing. His skin was silver in the dark. The moon was high now. He’d allowed Hux to clean his facial wound under the fluorescent lights of his bathroom, but it still oozed RED WHITE & YOU down his cheek and neck and into the corner of one golden-brown eye. It would need stitches. Stitches _and_ tape, and it would still mar his face forever. It should have made him monstrous, but instead it fit into his bizarre collection of features like a missing puzzle piece. He was handsome. A study in extremes; there was no middle ground in Kylo Ren. He was both pliant and destructive, boyish and terrifying, and he dealt out pleasure and pain freely. Handsome and dangerous and _crazy_.

_Aren’t I, too?_

“I hope not,” Hux lied. Kylo’s lips quirked up. He scented Hux’s true motives like he could see directly into his mind.

“Come by for a new set of tires,” Kylo offered.

“You won’t be working for awhile, I’m afraid. Not in that garage.” Hux smirked at him, and then returned to the stolen truck. Speaking of, best get his Audi out of the garage’s lot before someone came nosing along.

It wasn’t until Hux was home under Millicent’s watchful eyes and having a cigarette over his stove -- scrambled eggs on toast, he thought he could manage them now -- that he remembered he still had one last living loose end to tie up in Bangor.

Rose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> <3 when your crush takes your pulse and you forget you need to keep a hold on your gun <3
> 
> Did anybody want Kylo to die? Sorry if so. One more chapter. Also, from experience, don't return to your rapist for closure. It just doesn't work outside of fiction.


	8. Chapter 8

Hux looked Rose Tico up in his handy Bangor phone book, and came up empty. But there was a P. TICO residing there. Paige? Hux dialed the number.

One ring. Two rings. His heart was beating rapidly. _It might not be her. I thought it was Paige, I wrote out ‘Paige’ didn’t I? Nothing like quintuple homicide to shake up the old memory box. Or she’s not home, or they live separately, or they’re both on vacation up north in Ashland--_

Four rings.

 _\--and she’ll see the story on the front of a paper when she drives out to the nearest Gas & Go to pick up a fresh case of beer and an ice cream sandwich out of the freezerbox by the register, and she’ll pick up the paper as an afterthought because she’s the kind of woman who’d want to be sure, but then she’ll be sure and she’ll use the payphone at the station to make a call to the Bar Harbor deputy while her ice cream melts, and she’ll curse me for that too _.

The call went to the answering machine, and Hux recognized the voice at once. “This is Rose and Paige, you know what to do. Beep!” She said beep, and Hux was stunned by that for a moment, and then realized the tape might run out on him.

“Rose, this is Hux. The Kill Creek guy. I picked up my car from The Knight’s Inn and--” _She knows that_. “--you saw how marked up I was and I lied to you about it. I lied a lot. It wasn’t my boyfriend. I don’t have one.” Was that true? There was no word in the English language for what Kylo was to him, or him to Kylo. “Or didn’t then. It doesn’t matter. The truth is, I was raped. And that was bad, but I tried to make it right and-- I just need to talk to you, okay? I have to talk to you about it because--”

There was a click on the line and then Rose Tico herself was in Hux’s ear, sounding groggy. “Start again and go slow. I just woke up. Jesus, it’s only six. You’ve got a lot of nerve.”

  
  


They met at a park just off from the pier that stretched out like an accusing finger from the rocky Bar Harbor shore. Gray waves lapped at the Maine state line, consuming it slowly. Salt air from the storm brewing off the coast filled their lungs, and there was something restorative in that. It was ancient and primal the way that cold water soaking into your shirt beneath the earth was. Hux didn’t think he was hungry, but Rose brought two pastries and two cups of black coffee and forced one serving on him, and Hux found himself eating in large bites.

“Start at the beginning and tell me everything,” Rose said, preternaturally calm and very pretty in a pale blue blouse and her crescent moon necklace. She’d swept her bangs back behind a white headband today, coordinated with her coat. Her earrings were little amethyst stars.

Hux started with the invitation from Bangor Public Library, and Rose listened voraciously, occasionally adding an “Okay” or scrunching her nose to let Hux know she was still following. Telling it was so exhilarating that it went round the circle to fatigue, and Hux paused to down his coffee between the major acts. When he finished the tale, it was nearing eleven and the park was empty of its early morning rush, not yet filling with lunch goers. There were two young moms walking their strollers around the perimeter, but they were too far away to hear.

“Let me get this straight,” Rose said. “You want me to keep quiet about five murders in my hometown?”

“Yes.” Hux replied.

“That you committed.”

“Yes.”

“Did you find your underwear?”

“No, but my wallet and suit jacket are still in my car. Do you want to see them?” _Forgot about my boxers completely, I bet Kylo was happy about that, the brute_.

“No thanks. Where’s the gun?”

“I’ve got that in the car too. Loaded.”

“With the bullets you were going to use to kill him. And yourself.”

“Those ones exactly. Aren’t you afraid of me?”

Rose pursed her lips, considering it. “Not in a public park. And not with your voice on my answering machine at home. Even if you managed to kill me in broad daylight without Bar Harbor’s pier district noticing--”

“I don’t plan on killing you,” Hux said, which was mostly true. There _was_ the matter of the message he’d left her, which was not easily rectified without Rose’s cooperation. _Smart girl. Stupid me._ Though he had looked Paige up in the white pages and found her address.

“What if I say I’m going straight to the police?” Rose challenged him.

Hux thought that she was the type to ask it before she’d made up her mind, and that his answer would help her decide. So, he said, “Nothing. If that’s what you want to do, that’s what happens.” Old Hux would have liked that answer. New Hux didn’t, and the nameless voice liked it even less.

Rose aligned with Old Hux. She seemed appeased. “Have you worn yourself out?” She asked, in the way one might ask a hyperactive child that’s finally started to droop in need of a nap.

“I don’t plan on killing anyone else.” That was true, for now.

“Good to hear. I’d have to burn most of my bookshelf if you did.”

“Five is the limit?” Hux asked her, feeling himself smile. He didn’t think it was a frightening smile, because she answered it.

“I guess five is okay, if they were dirtbags. You better not be lying about any of it this time. And you should stay out of sight until your face is pretty again,” Rose scolded him, drinking from her to-go cup.

 _Five dirtbags in the dumpster are worth six in the bush,_ Hux thought. _No, seven. Two got away_ . His brain felt the way his gums did after a healthy shot of novocaine at the dentist. “I will,” he said. “After this, I’ll sit around on my couch and watch rentals. Nothing bloody. Got any recommendations?” _Not Star Wars, either. Not for a long time_.

“Sixteen Candles,” said Rose. “It’s racist as hell and sexist too, but the ending is sweet. There might be gay jokes, I don’t remember. I guess that’s just how the world works for people like us. You take the rot with the apple and you don’t complain even though it's all powdery in your mouth.” Hux nodded. He knew exactly what she meant. “When the hot guy shows up at the church for her and the music swells, I get chills every time. I wish anyone loved me enough to lean over a burning cake for a lousy closed-mouth kiss. You go home and watch it, and stay put until nobody will ask about those handprints you’re wearing. And when Paige asks me why I came out here, I get to tell her I went on a date with our favorite author. Okay?”

“Is this a date?” Hux asked her, teasing. Mostly. He thought she was lovely and smart. Kind. Too kind. He felt like a monster perched next to her on their bench. If they'd met under different circumstances...but they wouldn't have.

“It is.” Rose said firmly. “You better rev up that imagination and have a story ready just in case the Bangor police talk to the limo driver, or the cabbie that you called out to the Inn right before their morgue got an influx of business from Knight’s Cross. When the story breaks it’ll be big news, and we can’t assume it won’t touch you. You’re going to make sure it doesn’t touch me, because I don’t deserve that.”

 _She doesn’t_. “I’d say that Ren sent me home by Knight’s Cross and I passed by the roadhouse and thought it was quaint, so I decided to come back that evening and got more blitzed than I planned for.”

“Perfect. Just don’t embellish it too much. But I don’t think it’s a story you’ll have to tell. Did Kylo wrap it up before he...?”

“No,” Hux intoned, and then shuddered. If Rose heard his whole story and still thought this was a date, there was no point in skirting the truth now. “I wore him on my thighs the whole way home.”

“Ew. God I’m sorry,” The nose-scrunch appeared again. “But, good. The others probably went bareback too. If our police department is worth its salt they’ll run DNA on the Knights and find matches for some of their Ripper victims. They’ll put it together. I think it’s Kylo who should be worried, not you. You really don’t think he’ll keep doing it? Or come after you?”

“No, not without being prodded. Ren didn’t think so. Anyway, if he does….”

Rose nodded. The .38. “I don’t need to worry about you going home and using that on _you_ , right? Or slitting your wrists in the tub?”

Hux took a deep breath. The air was sharp and fresh coming off the sea. “No. No worries there. I don’t have a tub.”

“Good. I’m still waiting on a sequel to _Starlight Killer_.”

“You aren’t making yourself an accessory to five murders because you like my books.”

“You don’t think so?” Rose asked, all innocence.

“Not one bit.”

“You can blame your unpretty face. I’ll erase your message on my phone when I get home. I should get going. Paige will worry I met a murderer out here.”

They stood, Hux crumpling up their trash in one hand to toss out on his way back to his car. Rose was still finishing her coffee, though it must be cold by now. She shook her head when he reached for it. Hux gave her one last smile, hoping she would not drive home and have a change of heart towards him, and turned to walk away.

Rose cleared her throat.

Hux faced her again. “What?”

“Who ends a date like that? And after I came all the way out here for you. It’s practically criminal.” Rose frowned at him.

Hux stepped forward, letting Rose take hold of his coat lapels. She got up on her tiptoes, but he still had to lean down. The touch of her lips was soft but sure. Her chapstick tasted like cinnamon. He expected her to jump back once she realized her error, like a movie heroine cringing away from the slasher in the woods. She slipped him her tongue instead. The wind clicked a loose gutter against its eave on one of the wharf buildings, and it sounded almost like blinking neon. The walking moms circled past them and back around nearly to the opposite side of the park before they parted, with either good-natured chuckles or irritated remarks (depending on the health of the relationships that had created the tiny souls in the strollers) at the expense of the couple swapping spit longer than was appropriate for an oceanside park on a weekday morning.

“Okay,” Rose breathed. “That’s better. Not bad at all.”

“Yeah,” Hux agreed. But wasn’t it? It was very bad of him.

“You owe me a second first date, though. When you’re handsome again. And you’re paying.”

 _It would be supremely selfish to drag her into the mess I’ve made of my life. She doesn’t deserve someone like me darkening her door. Or Kylo, and I think I’ll be seeing him around. She deserves kisses over birthday cakes_ , Hux thought.

“I’ve got your number,” he said.

In the Audi, Hux realized it would be a very good idea to delete his recent travel history. “Hello Hux, I see we’re taking a trip.” The GPS greeted him.

“Not today. Just headed home,” Hux told it. “And I can find the way by myself.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If it wasn't obvious the credits song for this movie is Drive by The Cars.
> 
> Where everybody ends after this up is up to you, but personally I see Rose and Hux going on a few dates (maybe he takes her to an authors' conference and she makes Rey and Finn warm up to him) and then becoming good friends (he introduces her to Phasma and they hit it off romantically), and Hux "trying" not to see Kylo and failing miserably (read: actively pursuing Kylo and rationalizing it to himself like 'how dare Kylo be in this store I'm shopping at in Bangor where I do not live'). If Poe Dameron's fate doesn't sit right w you maybe he's another victim that got away (the Knight gave his bowling card to Ren to cover it up and avoid punishment) and became obsessed w serial killers so then he shows up after the fact and starts digging around and antagonizing Hux. WHOOPS SHIT wrote another whole story down here.
> 
> Gingerrose is v cute but this Rose truly doesn't deserve having to navigate romance with this Hux even if she is very good with rolling w it. If Rey hadn't canceled her Oct 12th visit she'd have kicked Kylo's ass and then reported him and and none of this would've happened but here we are. Technically the number of murderers in Maine was decreased overall so that's a happy ending right?

**Author's Note:**

> Someone kindly pointed out that I described technology being used that didn't exist in 1985 (internet, wikipedia), and I was going to leave it but then I decided it was an exercise in creativity to fix it. If you're heartbroken at the changes I still have the old version but they're pretty minor. Can you tell nobody betas my stuff? Lol. Anyway, did you know cruise control was invented in the 40s? The GPS is still a stretch but we're gonna pretend Brendol got a military grade one for his kiddo.


End file.
